Living on the Edge

Chip Ingram: There are few things in all the world that will put more pressure on your marriage than debt. There are so many pressures that come with owing other people money. So what do you do? How do you get peace when you're overwhelmed with debt? That's today. Stay with me.

Dave Druey: Welcome to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Druey, and today we're concluding our series, Choosing Love, with a message that gets intensely practical. Last time, Chip taught us that God owns it all; we're just stewards. Today, he shows how to actually live that out. You'll discover why money problems are rarely about needing more income, why tracking your spending for just 30 days changes everything, and how to develop a financial plan you both can agree on. Now here's Chip Ingram continuing his message, Managing Your Finances Together.

Chip Ingram: Let me give you a very brief overview of biblical finances. I'm going to go really quick. What the Bible teaches is that God owns it all. Second, we're stewards, managers, and trustees. Luke 16. I'm a steward, and a steward or a manager is someone who is entrusted with certain things to make good use of them for their master. Whatever I've got in my pocket, whatever I've got in the bank account, whatever kind of car I drive, whatever I have, it's yours, and I'm going to give an account for it.

Money is powerful and deceptive. The subtlety and deception of money is it takes you down a path. It's like being in water where you go out—if you've ever been at the beach—and you're having fun. You've got the sand, and if you have a family, you've got a couple of kids here and the blankets and lunch. They go out and play, and nothing happens, but the current is doing this. You look up and realize, "How did we get down here?" That's what happens to us with regard to money.

Money is the other god. According to Jesus, we can't serve both. Matthew 6. Giving is God's antidote to greed and the dangers of idol worship. We're commanded, "Instruct those who are rich in this present world"—and biblically, that's all of us—"not to be conceited or fix their hope on the uncertainty of money or wealth." Notice that's the reason. Because it's uncertain, He wants to protect us.

Debt is dangerous and to be avoided. I think the best counselors I know say it's not wrong to have some debt on appreciable items, but it's way better not to have any. We're to be accurately aware of our financial condition. Now, this would be interesting. I will not do this because I would not want to embarrass anyone, but if you all lined up and I could meet with couples and I would just ask the man, "In general, how much debt do you have? How much money do you have in savings?"

What I would find in most couples is one person would have a vague idea and the other would be like, "He takes care of all that," or "She takes care of all that," or they would both fumble around a lot and not have it very accurate. The Bible says, "Know well the condition of your flocks." You need to know this is our level of debt. Currently, right now, this is how much we've set aside for an emergency. This is a fund that we've developed for the next car that we're going to buy because we want to pay cash. This is what we're doing in terms of long-term investment or retirement.

The reason you're feeling the way you're feeling is because of the deceitfulness of riches. Do you realize 50% of all the people that graduate from college file bankruptcy? You go to college, they give you a t-shirt, and here's a credit card. By the time they're out, there's literally a whole generation—some Christian, some non-Christian—that thinks this is money. I remember one of my grandkids when they were about six or seven. I said, "I don't have my wallet, and I don't know what to do." One of my grandkids said, "Oh, just use one of those cards." In other words, you don't need money. There was no connection between money and a card.

If you want to get hold of your life, if you want to get hold of your values, if you want to get hold of your future, you have to get hold of your money, your time, and your thought life. If you do not get hold of your money, it will get hold of you. Despite your best intentions, it will take you places you do not want to go. If you don't get hold of your thought life, you can intend, you can try, you can want to, you can plead, but you are the product of your thoughts.

It's how God made us. Your emotions are a response to your thoughts. Much of your behavior, instead of being intellectually based—"Oh, this is logical, this is what I ought to do"—is not what we do. If I'm feeling kind of down, kind of blue, it's really logical not to go to the refrigerator, so I won't. What do we do? We eat. We spend. We shop. We go. We vacation.

There are only five uses of money. You can give it away, you can pay taxes with it, you can save it, you can pay off debt, or you can live off of it. When I say savings, I mean savings as in short-term emergency funds, which I find most people don't have. But then there's a mid-range savings where we set aside x amount so that when we get the tax bill, we don't go, "Oh." Every paycheck, a little bit goes in for the tax.

We have a game plan. At our age and our stage, we wanted to help our grandkids, so we set aside some where we started a little fund for their college. We wanted to visit our grandkids and stay connected. When they all grow and go to different places, about 15 years ago, we called it a kid fund. It's not like we had a lot of money to put in these things, but the discipline of creating where you want your money to go creates an intention.

Do you plan and do you segment your dollars so that what I knew at the end of the day was what's going to be valuable? I want to be connected to my grown kids. I want to have, at least every two years, a window of time where those little kids grow up and they remember being on the boat with granddad and grandma, and aunts and uncles and cousins. Did it cost a lot of money? Yes. But I saved for it for two years.

I don't have a ton of money in retirement, but I've got a plan that lines out. At 65, I said, "I don't have anything in the Bible about retirement." I want to be used by God. I'm not trying to figure out—I've met these guys whose whole life was, "Boy, maybe by 56 I can retire and play golf." Personally, I like to play golf. But I think pleasure is a great vacation; it's a bad vocation. Pleasure is a great tour guide. "Ah, let's have some fun." It is a terrible destination because it can't deliver.

Financial freedom requires—and please don't laugh—spending less than one's income. If you add up all your expenses this month or in the last year, are your expenses more than the money that came in? If so, do you understand that's a fundamental problem? The government can do that; you can't. They can just say, "Hey, let's print some more money." Unfortunately, we will all end up paying for all that one way or another.

The lie is that what we need is more income. Often, we get a second job or we'll do this or we'll do that, and then your priorities get out of whack. Now, are there times for a second job? Of course. But by and large, your need is not more money. Your need is to adjust your spending to your income. Your income needs to flow out of not all the things that we think we need, but you've got to go back to who we want to be. This is God's call on our life. This is what's important for our marriage. This is what's important if you have children or grandchildren. These are our goals. Then, okay, we're going to give first and foremost because we're going to declare that money will not be our god. Before we do anything else, I'm going to make my offering to God.

Second is I'm going to obey the government, so I'm going to set aside and pay my taxes. Then I'm going to say, "What do we need to live on?" But before we do, even if it's small, we're going to set aside some money to save. If I do all that, I'm not going to have much left. You're right. So do you need to lease a car that's $500 a month? Do you need cable and Netflix and this and that? Do you need to eat out seven, eight, nine times a month? That's just what happens. It's called freedom. It's called joy. The borrower is always a slave of the lender. You just get into bondage. It starts small and then it mushrooms. All I'm saying is that's the principle. You have to spend less than what comes in.

Dave Druey: You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and we'll continue in just a moment. Today's teaching is available for listening anytime over on our website, livingontheedge.org. Whether you want to listen again or share it with someone who needs encouragement, you'll find this message and hundreds more online. Plus, discover small group resources and practical relationship tools designed to help you choose love daily. Check it all out at livingontheedge.org. Now let's get back to Chip's message.

Chip Ingram: Often, money is not the problem. It's often just the symptom. Money solves emotional and relational problems short-term by compensation. A lot of parents buy stuff for their kids because they feel guilty they're not spending quality time with them. We buy gifts for one another or we say silly things like, "It's really been a rocky time in our marriage, so let's just go to Hawaii." I mean, we're only $60,000 in debt. What's another ten?

The logic goes like that. "There is a way that seems right to a man." Proverbs 14:12. There's a way that seems right to a woman. But the end thereof is death. What is common for other people is death for you. The fact that they do it is the fact that you're going to see people whose marriages don't work, whose kids are entitled, whose trajectory of their life is the opposite of what you want.

If you do some real hard evaluation at some level—or maybe more than you would like—maybe you're in the deep end of the pool, and you just realize this money thing is really the thing that's causing pressure. How do you solve the money problem? It has to begin with, "It's our problem that we will solve." We're going to do this together. Once the pressure happens, what do we do? "It's her," or whoever is the spender especially. "It's him. I can't believe he bought new golf clubs. I can't believe she went shopping and did this." You blame.

You either win-win or lose-lose. Assessment instead of blame. You will need to get prayed up and then say, "Let's sit down and see where we're at financially." We would so we both know. This is how much actually comes in. This is how much we pay in taxes. This is how much total debt we have in every area: long-term, short-term, credit card. This is how much we give.

I've done this many times in a season of marriage. For 30 days—and it's easier on your phone now; there are probably apps that do it—Theresa and I would say we're going to track every dollar we spend for 30 days just to find out. Spending would just be normal, but just track it. It's crazy; just by tracking it, you start spending less. Then you track it and you find, okay, this is how much on groceries, this much on going out to eat, this much on recreation, this much on clothes. All of a sudden, what you see is in your mind, "We don't have enough money to get by." When you see where it actually goes, you'll go, "Can you believe we spent $142 on Starbucks?" We have patterns.

God's not mad. But those patterns, those paths, there's a destination. I just want you to know the destination that a great majority of Christians are on is not where you want to be. So you sit down and you'll notice the worksheet is I've just kind of taken what other really smart people in finance have done: an honest appraisal and a confession. Here's where you start: "Lord, we are messed up with our money." Correction: "Lord, we are messed up with Your money." Since it's Your money, we're going to repent.

Second, we want to have a clear conscience. We want not just our words, not just our thoughts, not just our actions; we want our money to be a reflection that we're living in a way that's pleasing to You. God longs to bless you. Then there are principles here about a budget and how to do it and do it together. Establishing these are all the basic principles of finance. Resolving to get out of debt, developing a plan and a timeframe. Many of you, just like in other areas, you'll need someone from the outside—a financial counselor. A lot of churches now are doing some really good things with this.

Then explore creative means to reduce spending and living costs. Then just say, "Lord, we want to obey You." One of the things that we did after we found out how much we were spending was we developed—budget sounds so harsh, doesn't it? It just sounds like, "Ah, budgets." So what we did is when we came up with, "Okay, this is where we want to be, and this is what we can afford." Okay, we gave, we paid our taxes, we saved—at least just the principle; it probably won't do a whole lot of good, but we started there, and it kept growing.

Now we have this much money left. Then what we did is we said, "Okay, groceries." Literally, we went to the bank, we got cash. "Family of six, okay, $320." Put that in an envelope that says groceries. Recreation: we do want to go out a little bit, we want to do this, we want to do that. "Right now, $80 for this month." That goes in another envelope. We had like five envelopes. When the envelopes were empty, guess we're not going to Starbucks, guess we're not going out to eat. We lived on a cash basis. It can be different amounts, but you would be shocked how your debt will come down, your freedom will go up, and God will allow you to get hold of your finances.

What action step can you take to begin the process? This is one where, in most couples, it's either a default we don't think about it a lot or it's really an issue where there are a lot of sparks. This is one of those: let's agree, let's not blame anybody. We've done that, right? Second, let's not argue. That's no fun either. Let's work through this worksheet together and let's come up with just a plan that we both agree on.

What I can tell you, I've watched this, just like spiritual intimacy, when couples get on the same page in finances. Then, can I just warning, warning, caution light? In about two or three weeks, one of you won't stick to the budget. It's probably the spender. One of you is like really organized, followed through, detailed, and the other is a little bit more big picture. That's the culprit. Watch that guy.

Then you're going to have an argument. Guess what you'll do? You'll bear with one another, you'll define the problem, you'll initiate a time to talk. You have a way to solve the problem. You'll forgive one another. You'll repent; your Starbucks is down to four dollars. Do you get it? This is one that doesn't feel like, "Oh, wow, what a wonderful difference it will make." I will tell you, this will impact almost every area. Your children—"What do you mean we can't have that? What do you mean we can't buy that?" You'll have so many teachable moments when you begin to live in a way where you are wise stewards of His money and His time, of the home that you either own or rent as His steward, with the income that you have.

As you do that, venture capitalists, they look for who's the right person, the right idea, the right concept, the right need, and we want to fund it. The ultimate venture capitalist in the universe is God. He's looking for someone that would be a good manager that has an open heart, that would use the resources that would bring honor and glory to Him, and He would really like, as a byproduct, to have you really enjoy it and make you happy and probably provide some things that you would never dream.

But we live in a world where I want the things now for me, and I neglect my business partner, my venture capitalist, the funder, the provider. No matter how much you have, haven't we learned? Your small business is thriving; guess what? You're out of business. I've talked with people who spent 33 years building this company. It's gone. What you want is a financial partner that will never leave you, never forsake you, and no matter what happens or when you fail, you can always go back. He's near to the brokenhearted; He wants to help you.

Dave Druey: This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and we're wrapping up our series, Choosing Love. Today, Chip gave us nuts-and-bolts guidance for becoming wise stewards of God's resources. Chip will share a final word in just a moment.

Looking for more insight into biblical love? Chip's latest book, I Choose Love, takes everything we've covered in this series even deeper. The central message is simple but life-changing: love is a choice, not just an emotion you experience. Through Philippians chapter 2, Chip explores agape love, God's kind of love that operates completely differently than what our culture promotes. It's sacrificial, it's intentional, it puts the other person first, even when it costs you something. When you make the choice to love this way, everything shifts. Order your copy today at livingontheedge.org and start experiencing the transformation in every relationship.

Hey, want more of Chip's teaching throughout your week? Connect with Living on the Edge on social media. We share daily encouragement, powerful teaching clips, and biblical wisdom you can apply immediately. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram by searching for Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and then connect with us on YouTube by subscribing to Chip Ingram's channel. We look forward to seeing you there. Also, make sure you've subscribed to the Living on the Edge podcast. Our new Chip Ingram Sermon Podcast feature gives you Chip's full unedited messages exactly as preached. Now once again, here's Chip with a final word for our study, Choosing Love.

Chip Ingram: As we wrap up the series, I had a great time getting to teach it to those couples at the Billy Graham Center, and then I got to hear what was going on in their lives as they gave me feedback and talked about, "You know what? We're taking steps for spiritual intimacy. We prayed together last night." Someone else told me, "You know, we never even talked about money. My husband just took care of it all; I didn't even know what was going on," or "My wife took care of it all. We actually sat down and discussed our finances."

For others, it was, "This series was awesome. That little acronym of DIFFUSE about how to resolve conflict and that little tool you gave us on communication, having a conference, have been such a help of moving us closer together. We've gotten practical skills on how to have a marriage that's deeper and keeping our love alive." Maybe you missed one of the messages or what I'm talking about you're thinking, "Wow, I'd love to get those notes," or "I'd like to listen to this."

Let me encourage you to go to the website or there on the app and listen to these messages again, download the notes, and here's the challenge: who do you know that needs to hear this series? That you could send it to, that you could pray for, that you could say, "Hey, why don't we get together?" You could listen to it again, and why don't we take these notes and have discussions with two or three other couples? Why don't we get committed not just to hear about a skill, but to actually put it in practice? There is nothing that will give you greater joy or sustain your life in the things that matter most than building a strong marriage. Keeping love alive takes a lot of work. Go do it; you'll be glad you did.

Dave Druey: What does God's dream for your life look like? Well, tomorrow, Chip Ingram shifts gears to reveal what normal Christianity is really supposed to be, and it might surprise you. I'm Dave Druey. Join us tomorrow as we begin a series called God's Dream for Your Life, here on Living on the Edge. Today's program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.