Living Within Your Means
I am constantly finding blogs and magazine articles and television specials about how to reduce, reuse and recycle everything in your life...just to save money. Some people choose to make all their own cleaning products. Others have sold their vehicles and extra homes. Still others have decided to live on next to nothing and claim they're "living the old-fashioned life" when all they're doing is going to the extreme.
The secret to living within your means and still saving, investing and being good stewards of God's money is to be content with the monetary and temporal blessings the Lord has given.
I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. Philippians 4:12
There are two extremes in the financial world - spend nothing and spend what you don't have. Paul explained in this epistle to the church at Philippi that there was (and is) a happy medium when it comes to "stuff." He had discovered after being saved that happiness comes from relationship with the Lord, not from money in the bank or paying off a credit card.
Part of the problem with living in this lustful flesh is that we often covet all those shiny things that seem bigger and better than what we already have. Instead of living within our means and not relying on credit to help us out, we decide to get what we want when we want it. There is no room for satisfaction in the moment because we're wrapped up with paying off debt or finding new ways to save a few bucks.
If we choose to find the joy of the Lord in the present moment, with the things we already own, we can put our money worries aside. The trials and tribulations come when we refuse to be content with what we have, whether we're abased or abounding.
So just for today I pray you will look past the number of zeros that are or aren't in your bank account. I challenge you to find the satisfaction in what God has given you right at this moment. And I encourage you to praise His holy name for the blessings of the day regardless of your monetary status. Stay within your means and enjoy what the Lord has blessed you with.
The secret to living within your means and still saving, investing and being good stewards of God's money is to be content with the monetary and temporal blessings the Lord has given.
I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. Philippians 4:12
There are two extremes in the financial world - spend nothing and spend what you don't have. Paul explained in this epistle to the church at Philippi that there was (and is) a happy medium when it comes to "stuff." He had discovered after being saved that happiness comes from relationship with the Lord, not from money in the bank or paying off a credit card.
Part of the problem with living in this lustful flesh is that we often covet all those shiny things that seem bigger and better than what we already have. Instead of living within our means and not relying on credit to help us out, we decide to get what we want when we want it. There is no room for satisfaction in the moment because we're wrapped up with paying off debt or finding new ways to save a few bucks.
If we choose to find the joy of the Lord in the present moment, with the things we already own, we can put our money worries aside. The trials and tribulations come when we refuse to be content with what we have, whether we're abased or abounding.
So just for today I pray you will look past the number of zeros that are or aren't in your bank account. I challenge you to find the satisfaction in what God has given you right at this moment. And I encourage you to praise His holy name for the blessings of the day regardless of your monetary status. Stay within your means and enjoy what the Lord has blessed you with.
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