Stewardship with finances (part 2, budget)

Proverbs Proverbs 10 Proverbs 10 and 4 Says he becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand but the hand of the diligent maketh rich Now I should have mentioned to you last night that what I'm going to be covering tonight is On the third page of the outline I gave you last night practicing financial Responsibility and the handout that you were given tonight There's if you don't happen to have one there's probably some still at the back called a working budget And this is just some additional Material to stress yourself over I Remember one Woman said that she thought a budget was a husband's plan to punish her Well, it all depends on who's the spender and who's the saver in the family and it isn't always The same one either the husband or wife now Last night. I was focusing on the spiritual issues Concerning our financial stewardship and those issues are very very important the reality that it is Important whether we are coveting or contented whether we are living in the atmosphere of love and Who we love what we love basically there's a little saying that Whatever you love controls you and there's a lot of truth to that statement The issue of our faith that's tremendously important Our trust in God Tells him what we think of him better than anything else and so Because money and Possessions can become a substitute for God In the hearts in the affections and in the confidence of people It's not surprising that the Lord actually talked more about money than he did about heaven In the recorded utterances in the Gospels and he raises some very strong issues of our relationship to Money, and so tonight I want to Get into the practical handling of money as we Earn income and so on and I forgot to mention a quote last night that I think is very very important and it comes from a man named Larry Burkett who was a Christian counselor who passed away a number of years ago, and He made this interesting statement that the way we spend our money is the clearest Outside indicator of our spiritual values now when I read that that was kind of like a shock I Think we have the tendency to separate our spiritual life from our financial life We don't always see the important connection that exists But his claim is that how we spend our money is actually the clearest Outside indicator of our spiritual values now, that's kind of a sobering thing So I want to think with you about being diligent being disciplined in life and the benefits of it and so The number one and this is just in the introduction here the number one Financial practice that will be a benefit to you is simply to always practice Positive cash flow Now you know what cash flow is That's some kind of a chart or a graph it can be it's often shown that way where you have your income flowing in and Then all the expenses and where you spend your money. It's all flowing out the cash flow Positive cash flow is saying Always spend less than you earn And do it for the rest of your life Some people have captured that sense with a slogan pay yourself first and Many many financial advisors and so on they will say and they will take a 10% Which is a pretty high amount for a lot of people and they say take it and Put it away For many people the only way that's going to work is to have an automatic debit on your account and Whatever you set aside.

It doesn't have to be 10% that might be unrealistic for you but that idea of setting aside something for savings and buffer and and At least read this that even if you hate budgeting don't ever intend to budget Even if you did that much took 10% set it aside for future savings You would do all right You would manage you would learn to live on what you've got left And this is why so many of us get into payments for everything because You make your payment. I don't know how many times when I've talked to people about you know buying a car or or whatever and And they say well, you know, I just I could never never save up to buy a car Well, most of us don't seem to be able to but what you will do is you will go out and buy a car and put it on payments and you will be Saving up for a car in reverse The only problem is instead of you earning interest while you're saving You're spending interest while you're paying And what happens is when we get into this framework of always buying and paying later We're always working against a headwind as you might say. We're always working against That cost that additional cost that's built into everything else we do Because we don't have that money.

It's obligated and so You know budgeting sometimes Doesn't seem like much fun It's a lot more fun getting into debt spending it But it's only momentary and actually budgeting and being disciplined in this way Actually in the long term means freedom and It enables us to become better stewards of what God has committed to us. I'll just give you one example and and I Was giving some of this teaching in my own home assembly a number of years ago and and a brother who was very Godly brother It's one of the elders there now And when I I was actually giving the example that's in your in the working budget on on home buying strategies and there's Sam small and Bill big and After the meeting he came back when I came back he says well, he says I'm Bill big Well, he has an excellent job excellent career But he went and got the biggest mortgage that he could get And he says I'm doing great financially I have no Nothing to complain about but everything I've got is obligated And the reason why it had hit him was because his own brother lost his job and he was saying here I am So well provided by the Lord, but because I have obligated myself right to the hilt. I can't even help my own brother He recognized that his choice Financially was hindering him in being a Steward to care for the need that had arisen of his own brother.

And so the hindrances to good stewardship Materialism and easy credit Materialism as I mentioned last night is simply the preoccupation with material things and trying to satisfy our beings From the material world And it doesn't ever work there are some Satisfactions pleasures enjoyments of things but as soon as we set our heart on it to be the satisfaction of our life it just becomes a bondage and Easy credit is the one thing in particular that has created the circumstances that we find ourselves in today financially as Nations as whole economies we are living in debt funded economies credit funded economies and There is a price to pay we don't know yet what that price is going to be And the number one mistake materialistic lifestyle spending more than you earn Number two mistake is no budget No planning and so you tend to buy Impulsively or responsibly as you see things or as needs come up, then you buy things and then you worry about paying for them after and The number three mistake now some of this. I don't remember exactly where I got this from But it was I'm not sure if it was Larry Burkett's writings or another financial counselor named Ron blue I have appreciated material from both of those authors The number three mistake is automobile purchases And so I'll try to touch on a little bit of that later now How important is budgeting? Well, that's why I read in Proverbs 10 and 4 where We can become poor In fact, I'll say this that we today have the ability to be both rich and poor at the same time Many of us have so much more Than the vast majority of people living in the world if you've ever gone to another country and Spent some time there sometimes I remember after my brother David went to Chile as a missionary and this is going back 30 years ago now and My wife and I and my parents all went down for a visit We spent a couple of months there and it was actually a culture shock coming back home and just looking at what we have in Comparison to even the country of Chile, which is relatively modern and relatively doing well as far as South American countries We have been so much blessed we have so much And yet We can be stressed We can be so indebted and I remember this is going back again more than well, it was 1986 when I saw this quote in a focus on the family article and This was I don't know how much better or worse it is today, but it says that in the United States If you cashed out the average 65 year old man who basically is at the end of his working life if you cashed him out took all his assets and then all his liabilities and Added it up. He would be worth about $100 Now if that is true, that is terribly terribly tragic At the end of a working life to be just breaking even When you're approaching the years when you're going to have needs that you yourself may not be able to meet and so one of the big Aspects that we need to think about is not just living for the moment living for now, but recognizing there is a Time period of our life when we're going to need to coast on what we have accumulated previously and So budgeting is something that enables some of that to be able to be done another thing.

I remember Given this is just another comment about how we in our culture and certainly it has been my generation Comparison to my father's generation and now my son's generation in comparison to me is probably a little bit somewhat on the same line Where a young couple starting out often accumulates in the first three years of marriage What it should take them 30 years to accumulate And what it may have taken their parents 30 years to accumulate so basically what happens is and this is one of the side effects of progress is that we raise our children and and give them the best we can and they want to start out where we left off and Don't realize how long it takes and the discipline of life. It takes to actually get there and own it yourself and so On the on this page there is a suggested financial formula and I Didn't put it there just to confuse you more because this is nothing to do with the working budget. It's a totally different little little Budget idea Than the one that I have on the other sheets now this was actually in a book by Chuck Swindoll and It was a book about marriage and the reason why he put it in his book on marriage is simply because Financial problems account for about 50% of the marital breakups Tensions Conflicts That develop because of financial pressure has ruined Probably half of the marriages that have broken up so it is a very very Significant issue to think about now in this suggested financial formula, it's called the 10 70 20 plan You have first of all total earnings and then you take off from that What you Determine within your own heart to give to the Lord And I should make a few comments.

I really didn't get on to this last night on the subject of giving I I Believe personally and I've my wife and I have practiced this that And again, my income comes in bits and pieces here and there. I never know from month to month how much I'm receiving So it's impossible for us to say well, we're going to give to the Lord a certain a fixed amount So we base it on a percentage amount. So as gifts of fellowship come in We simply have a certain percentage that we always deduct and put into a little envelope Downstairs and that is what we call the Lord's money Now as I taught you last night, it's all the Lord's money It's all the Lord's money, but this is What we are devoting to give back to the Lord for his purposes Why is that? significant or or Important well the Old Testament talked about a tithe the New Testament does not use the tithe directly but there is a somewhat parallel concept taught in the New Testament and if you go to 2nd Corinthians 8 and 9 there are two chapters taken up with the idea of giving so it is not an Insignificant or unspiritual thing to contemplate Your money is just as sacred as anything else in your life It belongs in your worship and so to give to the Lord is an expression of appreciation That we receive everything from him Everything we have is from his hand and so to return something to him is an appropriate Expression of our thanksgiving and our worship to him.

It is also an expression of our trust That we are confident that we can give to him and we're not going to be the losers for it The Lord has a far bigger hand than I do a far bigger heart than I have and So that is part of the basic primary principle There's some very important concepts taught in 2nd Corinthians 8 and 9. I would just encourage you to look through it and As far as where you distribute it and disperse it most of us who are in assembly fellowship We recognize that what is Given week by week The reason that that is done is actually drawn from 1st Corinthians chapter 16. There's a reference to To that idea of laying by in store something weekly and so there's nothing wrong with this kind of a disciplined approach to giving to the Lord and Not simply waiting until something happens and you are called upon to give to the Lord In fact, really the the best way of looking at it. Is that what you set aside? Week by week or bi-weekly, however, you get paid you are there devoting it to the Lord and then as Opportunity comes and as Emergencies arise.

Well, then it can be dispersed for that need and so the Lord and then government taxes And Most people who work out All of that's taken off before they ever See the check so you don't have to worry about the government. They will take their taxes one way or the other The working money is then again savings and investments 10% and That is long-term savings and that can include pension plans and and Registered retirement plans and so on and then 70% to all living expenses and then 20% to the repayment of debts and What is called a buffer fund that is saving up for emergencies? Now if you look at that, you'll probably decide that that's a long ways off and again, this is just You might say a goal to steer your ship towards And Direct your your budgeting and so on towards that kind of of a goal Now I want to take some time to talk to you directly about credit, let's go to Romans chapter 13 Romans chapter 13 a Familiar verse in verse 8 Oh No man anything but to love one another for he that loveth another has fulfilled the law Now if you look at this verse in the context of Romans 13 He has been talking about government ministries government administration and the necessity of them being supported and so it says in verse 6 a tribute Verse 7 render to all their dues tribute to whom tribute custom to whom custom fear to whom fear honor to whom honor And so the passage is actually a little wider in in Context than just talking about you borrowing some money from somebody It is talking about paying your obligations meeting your obligations and So I'm not going to tell you that it is sin or wrong to borrow money What this is emphasizing is that whatever you owe pay it meet your obligations fulfill your contractual obligations But I will say this that credit has become a Great curse an Excessive borrowing is One of the things that has destroyed Individuals and families and So I don't take it lightly either So oh no man anything but to love one another why does he why does he say that well simply he's saying this Any other kind of debt or obligation you can pay it off You can free yourself from it But you will never never be free From the obligation to love others That is something we will never be able to Pay off and have no more accountability in other words I will never be able to come to the point where I say I don't owe you anything I Will always owe you the interest and care that love Puts me under as an obligation Now types of credit There's mortgages there's secured lines of credit There are Loans for cars for renovations loans for vacations There's that Plastic that seems to be so abundant today of credit cards And What is the problem with credit Well very simply what credit does is it blurs The relationship between your decision and its consequences Now if you were to Just to say for the next three months. I am only going to live on a cash basis And you go to the store, and you you see that and it catches your eye, and you think boy I'd like to have that And you remember no, I can't because I need this money for This this month But with a credit card, it's no problem As long as the limit hasn't been reached yet As long as there's room on it You can do it, and we think in terms of monthly payment affordability rather than cash amount Availability and so it blurs the consequence, but at the same time it multiplies the consequence You're going to pay more And you're going to pay it over and over again Researchers have found that when people use a credit card They will spend on average 34% more Than when they are not using a credit card So that's a good enough reason why they keep sending along those invitations to you to have a new credit card And they will give you an enticing low interest rate usually for six months or a few months and Then it jumps up to I don't know when I have is somewhere around 18% or 18.8% You know it's amazing thing how they can get away with that Because that's about the rate it was when when the bank lending rates were at 8% and 9% and that kind of thing and now that Banks are basically giving money away And credit is down at historic lows yet credit card Rates are still up there It's almost extortion Now The thing that I guess bothers me about it that irritates me is That I'm paying For the effect of credit whether I use it or not What I'm getting at is this credit easy credit what I call easy credit has had a tremendous inflationary effect upon living costs Now if you were just to ask yourself, what would the price of a car be? If people couldn't borrow money to buy a car What price would it be well it never would have gotten to the prices they are today It would have been restrained by the buying power but easy credit increases that buying power in a sense artificially and the net effect is that it creates more demand and enables the prices to rise the same thing on the grand scale is houses and It just is inevitable That house prices have to correct At some point Because young people starting out are not going to be able to buy a house and that is why we have seen this This effect Because we've been we've been seeing cycles of the inflationary effect of credit That's why now we are down at the bottom point of this whole process where interest rates are being kept at a bottom bottom almost nil and People are still getting to the place where they can barely barely afford to buy what's being offered.

I Don't think very many people realize how significant this all is It means that either Interest rates have to be kept this low for the next generation at least or Prices of real estate houses is going to have to come down drastically You may not believe this but when I bought when I the first house that I bought that I borrowed for The interest rates were at 16% for a mortgage And in the next couple years they actually went up about as high as about 18% now you can imagine what that did It would be a very worthwhile thing a sobering thing For you to to get out of a financial calculator You can look at there's all kinds of them online and so on Where you plug in the cost as each percentage on a hundred thousand dollar Mortgage on as each percentage goes up on a 15 year loan and a 25 year loan I should have brought it with me tonight. I had it at somewhere. I forgot to put it in You'll see the increase of how much more you're paying every percentage of increase What that means is if The banks are forced to begin raising interest rates There's a lot of people who are just about here Are going to be underwater And So it's a very sad reality Sobering reality now An appropriate limit for credit I Remember going in to a bank with a Sister who had asked me to help her out To advise her She had never bought a house before She had a good job.

She was a schoolteacher But when she went in there the bank manager or the loans officer Basically asked her what her monthly gross income was Now Her net take-home pay was Significantly different there were a lot of deductions. They have a heavy-duty pension plan With the teachers in Ontario and What she had to live on was Didn't bear much relationship to what it looked like on paper But he never asked her any other Questions about any other debts she had any other payments She had he just simply looked at this and he said you qualify for this much of a loan Now she kind of looked at me because it was more than what she thought she could afford and I just shook my head slowly and And so she only asked for what she had originally intended to to borrow So the the amount that they often will give is 33 to 40 percent of gross monthly salary What you have to think of is in terms of your net spendable income not gross salary What you actually have after these other things are removed Now What I'm saying is that amount can be way way too high and Put all the rest of your life in a real bondage now the next question is Doesn't matter what we borrow for and that answer should be pretty obvious The next question I have down actually answers that question will it give you a return financially You know the whole our whole life isn't to be consumed with Dollars and cents But at the same time it has such an impact on the rest of life that we need to take seriously Its impact in the decisions that we make so what does it matter what we borrow for? Well, if you are borrowing for something that is going to return you Financially Well, yes, it can be reasonable and prudent to borrow for it Now, what do I mean by a return financially? Well, will it increase your income? Will it increase in asset value like a house or land that may go up in value Is it a good bargain in that sense? Is it possible that it could reduce your operating costs? And an example in my own experience was the first house I had in Timmins was had electric heat and electricity was becoming very expensive there and it was going up and up and so I figured it out and and Discovered that if I put in a high-efficiency gas furnace, I would recoup the cost in about four years so I did it and so It I didn't have to borrow money for it. I Had done the opposite way a few years before we had decided to start setting aside a little bit as a Buffer or savings.

It was only a trivial amount but it just kept getting deducted into a savings thing and I probably wasn't wise to take it out Because I didn't replace it but I Didn't have to borrow for it. But anyway, even if I had borrowed for it, it would have been repaid back in a quick enough time it would have been Make make sense. So those are our questions to ask but the problem is that most of the problem with Credit especially with credit cards is that we're spending it on things that do not Do anything for us financially and only put us into more bondage now The question of surety going back to the Proverbs again Proverbs 6 There's a number of times in the scriptures it warns about this problem of surety Proverbs 6 and 1 my son if thou be surety for thy friend if thou has stricken thy hand with strangers With a stranger thou art snared with the words of thy mouth thou art taken with the words of thy mouth do this now my son And deliver thyself When thou art come into the hand of thy friend go humble thyself and make sure thy friend Give not sleep to thine eyes nor slumber to thine eyelids Deliver thyself as a roll from the hand of the hunter and as a bird from the hand of the fowler Now that's pretty strong language, what's it talking about well surety is providing a guarantee and This is in the context here of doing it for a friend the most familiar example.

This would be is when son or daughter wants to get their first car and they don't have any equity or anything to Sign over as collateral and so they say dad or mom can you come and you co-sign with me and by you co-signing you are becoming the guarantor that if son or daughter doesn't Keep up the payments You get to make them That's quite a privilege of being a parent so the warning is Watch out It's not a sin to do this you may choose to take the risk and accept Whatever the consequences are if things fall apart but it is warning you that you could put yourself in a real problem that you weren't counting on and so the problem is that we can do this to ourselves as as well and many of us sign those documents when we're signing a mortgage or a Loan for something and we really don't pay attention to some of that fine print about what happens if Now I'm not sure exactly what the situation is here, I know there's been all kinds of mess with foreclosures and so on and But basically the issue is this if you sign a mortgage for a property You need to know That if something happens and you can't make the payments and it has to go back to the bank Do you have any further obligation? concerning that mortgage or Does the property itself? Is the property itself the guarantee or The value that they are going to take and they can't take anything more if you Become personally Surety you yourself are making yourself accountable that even if in a downturn of the economy and That property plummets in value and it's now below the value of the mortgage That you're still obligated to make up the difference if the bank has to sell it at a loss Now, I don't know what the situation is here. But some in some jurisdictions that's the way it is and This could happen with Real estate it could happen with other kinds of loans as well. So that's just a caution to be aware of to know what you're signing for and To not put yourself in an obligation Where you could be have unlimited responsibility for payment now on the other hand There is an issue that I should mention and that is the problem of bankruptcy Bankruptcy has become very very easy.

I Don't know what it is here, but I know There have been record Bankruptcies the last several years every month basically is a new record for bankruptcies There is not the same Stigma as there used to be to going into bankruptcy Now I personally do not believe that every case of bankruptcy is an issue of covetousness It could be things completely out of the control of the individual It could be poor management rather than covetousness involved but if a person knowingly Borrows money Intending to go bankrupt that is clearly covetousness that is fraudulent as well a criminal offense and So as Christians, this is a really tough one Because basically as a Christian we should feel responsible to pay our debts But I would make a difference if You were foreclosed on and you were willing and Trying to repay what you can now again. That's become a difficult issue for some Now some simple guidelines for credit cards. I have one so I'm not one of those that Declares that you must not ever own one, but the simple obvious, excuse me the simple obvious thing Is to simply make sure you pay it up every month I Don't know if I have ever paid interest on a credit card as far as I know.

I haven't And I actually use one because it has a rebate feature on it It's called I'm not gonna It's Citibank Drivers Edge MasterCard, I'm not making a promotion here but Every purchase I make on the card. I there's 2% goes towards Purchase of a vehicle and It's not restricted to new vehicles. So I have earned Over the years I've probably earned about six or seven thousand dollars on it and used it whenever I have bought a car to throw on it, so It's I think it's alright to use a credit card to earn some money instead of cost you But if I start having money owing month by month That rebate is nothing 2% is nothing compared to 18% The problem is that if you allow yourself To start using it and then it becomes a struggle to pay it all off and you start reducing Because they have that minimum payment deal and it's a it's and it's just a trap If you ever find yourself going that direction you must stop you must recognize it's out of control and so To try to pay up every month make that a law unless very extreme Emergency keep only one general card The exception could be if for business use for for specific Business expenses Make sure you limit the total that you that you put on the card Learn to distinguish between needs and wants And pay cash whenever possible and then get a little more serious about it if you find yourself Becoming a slave to your impulses If you tend to be an impulse buyer, you should leave your card at home or put it in the freezer or Cut it into little pieces and put it on a plaque or something like that If you find yourself running it up to the limits If you find yourself hiding your purchases from family members, those are all warning signs that you are not in control of it and You need to get rid of it Now what about consolidation loans? Consolidation loans are used to to get rid of all this high interest credit put it on a loan Hopefully at a much better interest rate and get it paid down That is a good idea on one very important condition That is that you stop spending as you have been One couple that I know went this whole route They had a house.

It was what we call a semi detached house in Canada I forget just what you call them here where it's a half house, you know side-by-side and When they got married He owned at least 75% of it He had equity of at least 75% of it within three years They had burned up all that equity By impulse spending they had also racked up four credit cards to their limit and so they did a consolidation loan and Guess what? within about six months they had Their credit cards back up to the limit again because they never changed their ways the next obvious choice was bankruptcy and They lost everything So that's the way it goes if you do not take control Now I wanted to at least draw attention to a couple of things on the working budget and The investing at the here at the end of this sheet that we've been working on is really just for a little bit of awareness of the idea of risk and reward and I really don't have time to look into that, but if you look on the on Page two of the working budget and you'll have to just run through this and and see what is Involved in in these categories and how it's broken down, but I want to give you this one example at least of in the middle of the page of Home buying strategies This Is a real eye-opener for a lot of people and now the the interest rates being as low as they are now sort of changes just how dramatic the difference is and it's always hard to to Be realistic Because real estate values vary so much from area to area So I don't know if this will look realistic to you or not But the idea is to try to buy a smaller house first pay it off improve it if necessary and then use that as a stepping stone to a larger house or your dream home or whatever you want as your your final home and this is just an example to show the significant difference of spending the same amount of money and Yet getting such different different Outcomes so looking at this the second one bill big here. First of all, he goes out and he wants to buy his Good home right at the start So he buys a two hundred and ten thousand dollar home with a ten thousand dollar down payment So he's a two hundred thousand dollar mortgage at four and a half percent for twenty five years the payment 1107 a month the total cost Is of the mortgage is three hundred and thirty two thousand one hundred plus is down payment. The grand total is three hundred and forty two thousand one hundred now If you were to compare that to an eight percent mortgage You would see a vast difference.

The cost would be way way higher yet again It would be a more dramatic example even but in contrast. Here's this other fellow Who does this in two steps first of all, he buys a small house for a hundred and ten thousand with the same size of down payment a hundred thousand mortgage at four and a half percent for nine years with a more or less equivalent payment of 1126 a month now his total cost to do that is a hundred and twenty one thousand and with the down payment it comes to a hundred and thirty one thousand six hundred and eight and Then what he does then is he sells that house and he buys the house next door to his to this other fellow so now they're both going to be in the same kind of a house side-by-side and Now that he has his hundred and ten thousand dollar down payment He's left with a hundred thousand dollar mortgage At the same interest rate for nine years. There's a lot of assumptions and all of this, of course The payment stays the same when you add it up It's a hundred and twenty one thousand plus the cost of the first home a grand total of two hundred and forty three thousand two hundred and sixteen Now the point of it comes to this in 18 years He has paid for You might say the same house, but the other man is still paying for and he has done it for two hundred and forty three thousand Instead of what the other man is going to pay three hundred and Forty two thousand so you can see there's almost a hundred thousand dollars difference of what he has paid To have that house and he gets it fully paid in seven years Ahead and The the simple reason is because he is not paying that huge Overhang If you know how interest is charged on a mortgage it's charged on the whole principal owing and Then you get to pay a little bit of principal And so if you can start out with a much smaller amount of principal that big overhang of Interest is not nearly so large.

And so the principal then is going to eat away eat away at the amount a lot quicker and so just to give the to complete the comparison Sam now owns his house debt-free and bill still has seven years to pay and so Sam invests the same amount Basically that bill is paying for seven years now the possibilities of what he might get on a return Who knows but just looking at these possibilities from a hundred and six thousand two hundred and twenty six thousand So here you have two men now at 25 years of their life spent of their working life they each have nice houses side-by-side But one has another hundred and twenty five thousand dollars in Investments likewise now is one of these more spiritual than the other Maybe not This is nothing to do necessarily with the man's As Spirituality or it could have something to do with the spirituality But all I'm saying in looking at this is that Understanding this principle of the cost of interest Can help you to be wiser And to be a better steward of what God has entrusted to you Now the other big example is in car buying and Really, I'll have to just let you look through that but purchasing cars Is one of the Best ways to invest One of the worst ways to invest you can't really call it an investment You can barely pay it off as fast as it depreciates and because they depreciate Fairly quickly you get to do it again and again and again So it's actually possible to pay almost as much sometimes more for cars in interest on cars through your lifetime than you put into a house and They're wasting assets and so again We're all paying for the credit binge That as a society we have been on and so it makes it increasingly difficult for anyone to overcome that but if you can apply some of these principles and recognize the benefit of Contentment of being willing to sacrifice in the present for the benefit of the future you will be on your way to Improving your circumstances and freedom from the bondage that credit can bring shall we pray Our gracious father we thank thee that Thou art our Great Shepherd We thank thee that thou art caring for us But we confess that it is hard for us in such a materialistic world that we are in to be able to distinguish between needs and our wants and to live with a sense of contentedness and trustfulness and Appreciation for what thou has blessed us with and to Not be living always With the need to have more and so we pray that thou might teach us thy ways Help us to see past the glamour the glitter of the material world and To recognize that true life is really found In the spiritual realm in the realm of relationships Our father we cry to thee that thou would help us to be able to live in freedom and Not to be in bondage We cry to thee for thy blessing upon us We all have struggles in this area and so we commit ourselves to thee in our Savior's precious name Amen