Episodes
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It’s easy to get things out of perspective. We stub our toe – and all we can think of is our sore toe – everything else goes out the window. And perspective comes when we look at the big picture – creation … the God who created it all.
There’s a place on the internet called "Second Life" I don’t know if you’ve been there, but it has this massive cult following around the world. It is in effect a virtual world. You can live there. You can buy real estate, have a job, join a church, have an affair, all with other people who live in "Second Life". It really, truly is an amazing place.
Pastors have planted virtual churches there. People actually buy and sell virtual real estate and build houses in "Second Life". People literally can and do have virtual affairs with others in that place. I am not saying that’s a good thing, it’s just what it is.
I kind of imagine sometimes if somehow I could become part of the "Second Life" cosmos actually, live my life inside this virtual world as the place where I actually live, well eventually, eventually it would dawn on me that someone would have had to create this virtual world. I mean, there must have been some visionaries who conceived it in the first place and then designers and developers and sociologists who implement it, maintain and build the new features.
If I were immersed in this virtual world and living out all of its benefits, at some point I want to start knowing something about the people who created it. Who are they? What makes them tick? Why did they build this place called "Second Life" in the first place? What motivated them to give them this opportunity? At some point I would want to know the creator. I mean, it’s only natural.
The Bible uses many different names for God. There’s a reason for that. In the Hebrew culture names were important because names had meaning. And so it was so it was really important to understand the meaning of the person’s name to understand the purpose that God had for them. "Moses", that word means "to draw someone out". He drew Israel out of captivity in Egypt. And so it is true with the names of God.
There are quite a few of them used in the Bible and you have to ask yourself, well why would God allow His Word, the Book that reveals Him to us? Why would He allow all those different names to be used of Him? I’m really quite happy with just the one name for myself, thank you very much, but God allows different names to be used. Why?
Well the answer’s this. He wants to tell us who He is, what He’s like and these different names reveal God to us. That’s important. I want God to be real in my life. I want to know Him in my ups and in my downs. I want to have an intimate relationship with Him and if He’s chosen to reveal Himself to me in part through these different names in the Bible then I want to discover what He’s trying to tell me.
Today I would like you to join me on a bit of a journey to uncover just one of those names and it’s the name, the very first name used of God in the Bible, it’s the name "Elohim". It names God as the powerful creator of the universe. This name, "Elohim" literally means "God the creator". Just listen to the beginning to the first book of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1:
In the beginning God (Elohim) created the heavens and the earth. The Earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep while the wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.
And then comes the incredible story of God’s creation. So many people get hung up on how God created the cosmos and how long it took and how did He do it. Can I be honest with you? I don’t know exactly how He did it, and I don’t know exactly how long He took. What I do know is that God did create the earth and the heavens and the universe. God is the creator of everything. The trillion, trillion or so stars that we know about, spread over such vast distances.
The astrophysicists tells us that the size of the visible universe is about 15 billion light years. That means the light which travels at an amazing speed of 186,000 miles per second, the light from the farthest star at one end of the universe takes 15 billion years to travel from that one end to the other end of the visible universe. And what lies beyond the visible edge of the universe? Only God knows. Elohim – God the creator of this massive, incomprehensible universe.
But not only did God create this massive cosmos, He created you and me, atoms and molecules and beetles and bugs and mice and cockroaches and the most incredible sea creatures and viruses and bacteria. The list goes on and on. Let me ask you something. If you were Elohim, the creator, would you have created beetles and had you conceived these things, beetles, how many different species would you have created. Five, ten, fifty, one hundred. Maybe you were feeling really creative that day and you made five thousand, well ... God created 360,000 different species of beetle.
In fact the more we look at this creation around us, the more we start to realise something. It tells us a whole bunch about the God who created it. And if you’re stuck in the traffic or the train or bus on the way to work, have you ever just kind of detached yourself from the mundaneness of it all and looked around and thought to yourself, man look at this, the trees, the car, the people, the birds, the sky, the rain, the night, the day, the birth, the death … the whole thing. Just look at it. Isn’t it amazing? So massive yet so intricate; so fascinating and yet on so many levels so incomprehensible.
Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and realised how amazing you are? Have you ever marvelled at your memory or your reasoning capacity? I often wonder how is it I can remember so much. Where do I store it? Where does it come up from in an instant? And when I can’t remember something from the past, all of a sudden, about an hour-and-a-half later, how is it that it pops into my head?
My friend, as you stand back and look at creation, let me ask you this. What does it tell you about this God, this God who created it all? Aren’t you inquisitive? Don’t you want to know? The creation speaks to us about the Creator. That’s exactly what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 1, verses 19 & 20. He said:
For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them ever since the creation of the world His eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things that He has made.
And what a mighty God He is. What an incredibly creative and totally unexpected and unpredictable God He is. As I look at His creation, that creation seems to speak these things back to me over and over again about Elohim. Firstly:
1. He is so amazingly creative and inventive.
2. He’s incredibly powerful.And those are the things that I need to know about my God when I’m stuck in a hole. Those are the things I need to know about my God when I’m confronted with problems.
This God who created 360,000 species of beetle, do I think He’s not creative enough to come up with a solution to my problems? This God who created a universe 15 billion light years across, at least, quite possible more, do I think He doesn’t have the power to solve my problems? When the devil attacks my faith and my flesh, do I somehow imagine God can’t cope. God the creator – Elohim. This is the God that God wants to be to you and to me.
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To be honest – sometimes – our problems seem bigger than God. They just do – it’s kind of natural – they feel like they’re closer than God, and so they look much bigger than Him. That’s when we need to know how Great God really is.
Let me ask you something today. Who is God? People use that name, God, in all sorts of different ways. Some use it frivolously. I don’t know if you watch TV and have seen one of those surprise "makeover" shows.
You know, when a team comes in and does a complete makeover on someone’s garden or their house. When they bring the person along to have a look at it, to show them what’s been done, nine times out of ten, this person jumps up and down and screams, “O My God!” It always makes me wince. I ache inside that God’s name is used that way. So thoughtlessly.
Other people, they use the name of God in different ways and my hunch is, that who we expect God to be is different from person to person. Some people hear that word, God, and it brings shudders of guilt through them. They know they’ve been running away from Him. Others again see God as some grumpy old man with a big stick or at the other end of the spectrum, kind of like a sugar daddy who’s supposed to shower them with gifts all the time.
Let me ask you, when you say that name, God, who are you talking about? This God, when you hear that name, what comes to mind. This week and next week on the program we’re going to head off on a bit of a journey of discovery. Who is this God?
Interestingly, throughout the Bible there are quite a number of different names used for God. These days, we only really use a few, God, Lord, Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit. That’s about it really. But not so in the Old and New Testaments, particularly let me say in the Old Testament – the Hebrew Bible if you will. And there’s a reason for that because in Hebrew culture names were very, very important. Names had meaning, they defined who you were.
Joshua, for instance. The word ‘Joshua’ means God’s salvation and it was Joshua who led Israel into the promised land after their forty years in the wilderness. God’s salvation. Abraham, the father of Israel, that name means father of a multitude. And that was God’s promise to Abraham even though at a very old age he and his wife were still childless.
And so it is that names have a huge meaning in God’s Word, the Bible. Much more so than perhaps in our modern day cultures. And so when God allows the scriptures to use a whole bunch of different names for Him, He’s telling us something. He’s revealing Himself to us through those names in an intimate way, in a beautiful way.
The various names for God used throughout the Bible is like God gently whispering through each name, "This is who I am, this is what I’m like." And so often in life we lose sight of who God is and what He’s like. It’s as though He’s way over there in heaven and we’re way over here living our lives and it feels as though He is a million miles away. But as we hear His gentle whisper, "This is who I am", all of a sudden we come to know Him better in our hearts.
So the first name for God that we’re going to kick off with today is the name, Adonai. Interesting name. It’s plural to start with. They had no idea back when they first started using that name for God that He was three in one - Father, Son, Holy Spirit. But God began to reveal that through His name Adonai, the plural of Adon which means Lord, great and mighty and sovereign Lord, Lord above all. The sense of complete and supreme authority.
Let’s check it out. Psalm 8 verse 1:
O Lord, our sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
There it is, God above all. Further on in verses 3 and 4:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you’ve established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals, that you should care for them.
See the God who created the cosmos, the heavens, the trillions upon trillions of stars, all this I look and see that you created it. Adonai. And yet you made us too. And not only did you make us, but you know us and care for us.
O Lord, our sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth. (Verse 9.)
That’s the Lord, God Almighty, above all the heavens and all the earth. King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Sovereign, nothing big or small happens that He doesn’t notice, that He doesn’t allow to happen.
Now hold on to that thought for a moment and let me come to your life, your circumstances, your day to day, your here and now. What’s going on in your world at the moment? My hunch is that there are possible some good things happening in your life right now and then there are some difficult things. Perhaps painful or frightening things. Things that seem to be so out of control. Things that you’d love to change if you could but it doesn’t seem that you can.
Does that sound a bit familiar. And those things, those things that are so out of our control, they’re the things we think, "If only I could change that one thing or solve that one problem, or heal that one relationship, or have just enough money to … or whatever it is. If only I could deal once and for all with that thing, my life would be fantastic."
Can I tell you something? We all have those things in our lives. I doubt whether there is a single person listening today who doesn’t have at least one of those things in their lives right now. And then mountains, so big, so immovable, so imposing, so impossible that they overshadow our lives. We may appear to be in control on the outside, but on the inside it aches.
See, this is the place where the rubber of faith hits the road. What does the name of God mean to you when you look at that dirty, great big mountain overshadowing your life. Is the mountain bigger than your God or is your God Adonai, the Lord Almighty. The Lord over all the heavens and all the earth. Is your faith in some remote distant, irrelevant, religious God, or is it in the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords who conceived and created the cosmos.
Let me take you to another place, an intimate place, where the name Adonai is used for God. Habakuk chapter 3 verses 9-10:
God the Lord is my strength, he makes my feet like the feet of the deer and makes me to tread upon the heights.
Because this is the place that God, the Lord Almighty wants to take us. He wants to be our strength. This mighty sovereign, powerful God, who is Lord of the heavens and the earth and everything that’s in them wants to take that power and impart into our very being.
He wants His strength to be our strength. Right in the middle of the pea soup of a life that we’re swimming through right now. And that great immovable, impossible mountain, He wants to life us up like a feet of a deer and make us tread upon its heights, not wallow in the depths. This God is saying, whispering to you and me today, "This is who I am":
God the Lord is my strength, He makes my feet like the feet of the deer and makes me tread upon the heights.
Adonai, Lord Almighty. This is the God that God wants to be to you and me.
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Episodes manquant?
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Freedom, which is what we’ve been chatting about over these last couple of weeks, is a great concept. But it’s more than just a concept. God’s freedom is meant to make a real difference in your life.
It’s amazing, just over my lifetime, how many changes have taken place as oppressive regimes have fallen. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Soviet Union came apart in 1991, Apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994. Of course there are still plenty of oppressive regimes around the world. There are still more than enough conflicts and wars but there has been a lot of change, even in my short lifetime. And hopefully, we’ll see a lot more.
The good change happens when countries move from oppression towards freedom. When instead of looking after a privileged few through oppressive power structures, governments and leaders start to look after their people.
The bottom line is that you and I were created to be free, to be equal, to be able to live out who we’ve been made to be. Of course, within the rule of law but then without that, there can be no real freedom. And yet as individuals we all too often squander that freedom. We all too often throw it away through our own tyranny, our own selfishness, our own tendency to want to look after ourselves at the cost of everyone else.
The Apostle Paul makes an interesting, almost blindingly glimpsingly obvious point about freedom. Galatians chapter 5, verse 1, he says:
For freedom, Christ has set you free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
In other words, wake up. Get a revelation; this isn’t just talk, this thing about freedom. There’s a point. God actually wants you to be free. Jesus put it slightly differently in John chapter 8, verse 36, he says:
So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
I love that, free indeed. Really, truly free from the slavery of sin. This is every bit as amazing as the Berlin Wall coming down, as the Soviet Union and communism coming to an end, as Apartheid coming to an end. Even more so, because this freedom is available to every last human being on planet earth.
You can be a prisoner in a dungeon on death row, as in fact the Apostle Paul was when he wrote many of the books of the New Testament, and still be free indeed. You can be in the middle of the worse imaginable circumstances of your life and yet, in Christ still be free indeed.
This is not just a theory lesson. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. He means for you to be free, free indeed, free from the sin that has ravaged your life. Free from the shackles of bondage. And given the price he was prepared to pay for your freedom with all my heart, I believe that he doesn’t want you to settle for anything less in your life than being free indeed. But exactly what does that look like?
The freedom that Jesus purchased for you and me on that cross is something that we can never earn for ourselves. Now many Christians know that in their heads but only a few live out that truth in their hearts. I want to come back for a moment to one of my favourite verses about freedom in the Bible: Galatians chapter 5, verse 6:
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything. The only thing that counts is faith working through love.
In other words, no other rules in the old rule book, in this case the rule of circumcision, count for anything. The only thing that counts in the kingdom of God is your faith working through love.
Now there’s a powerful truth here about actually living out the freedom that we have in Jesus Christ. There is an incredibly powerful truth here about how to lay hold of this freedom, how to experience this freedom first hand in our lives.
The first part is faith. Now, I’m a simple guy and you know what, God’s word says that Jesus died for me and because of that I am set free from my sin and because of that I have the gift of eternal life. I’m going to believe in Jesus for my salvation. I am going to believe in Jesus for my freedom. And I am going to believe, just as the Bible tells me to, that these are the free gift from God through the sacrifice of Jesus full stop, end of story, I believe. How about you?
But then, then God wants us to put that faith to work in love. And the sort of love he’s talking about here is sacrificial, unconditional love. The very sort of love that Jesus showed towards you and me on that cross, agape love.
Look, without work and exercise, your muscles are going to waste away. If you sit there on the couch, you’ll just become weaker and weaker. And without works faith is dead unless we take our faith out for a walk. Unless we exercise our faith in sacrificial, unconditional love, it becomes empty, hollow, dead. I think you know what I’m talking about here.
What does freedom look like? How do we lay hold of God’s freedom? By having faith in what God says and by living out that faith day by day, by showing the same unconditional, sacrificial love that Jesus showed towards us on that cross. It’s by living that sort of a life that you experience freedom. A sense of freedom that we’re all so desperately looking for comes when we surrender our lives to God, believing in him, trusting in him and working out that faith by loving others in him.
Rules? Nah, the only thing that counts is faith working through love. And when we live like that, other people’s failings and weaknesses will no longer rob us of our freedom.
All too often we set out at the beginning of a day with all good intentions of living in God’s joy and God’s peace, living in the freedom that Jesus came to give us. After all, as the Apostle Paul writes, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. That’s why God sent Jesus to give us that freedom. But then it’s almost as though the devil deliberately wants to rob you of your sense of freedom.
Someone comes along and argues with you, to fight with you, to be angry with you, to stab you in the back, right? And it’s like in an instant your sense of freedom, your peace, your joy, they just disappear. In an instant you go from living in victory to being a victim. Freedom, great, what happened to that? But God had an answer to that. He has a solution for that because He doesn’t want anyone or anything robbing you of your freedom. Again, the Apostle Paul, Galatians chapter 6, verses 1 and 9:
My friends if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time if we don’t give up.
Did you catch that? Instead of adopting a victim mentality, instead of going on the back foot, get out there on the front foot by exercising your faith through unconditional love. Look, when they came to arrest Jesus, when they tried him, beat him, spat on him. When they nailed him to a cross, not at any point in that process did he adopt a victim mentality. He knew what he was about; he knew what he was called to, to save us through sacrificial, unconditional love. In fact, at one point he even said in John chapter 10, verse 18:
No-one takes my life from me but I lay it down of my own accord. You see I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again. I have received this command from my father.
There is freedom of choice; there is faith working through sacrificial love. So when people come against you, don’t throw in the towel, don’t become the victim, don’t grow weary in doing what is right, don’t let them rob you of your victory and your peace, your joy and your freedom. Don’t grow weary of doing what is right. Love them, create them, admonish them, sure, but do it in love.
Whenever you have the opportunity, show unconditional, sacrificial love. Will it hurt some days? Absolutely, going to the cross always hurts but you will reap that harvest at harvest time. That’s freedom.
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There are so many things that will rob us of our freedom. And right up there, at the top of the list, is our enemy the devil. Because he knows that if he can make your freedom evaporate, chances are, he can drag you away from Jesus.
This probably isn’t going to be any shock to you, but your enemy the devil does not want you to be experiencing the freedom that Jesus came to bring you. Now, let’s not get confused about this; he’s happy for you know about that freedom in a vague sort of way. He’s even happy for you to see other people living in God’s freedom. That’s not a bad thing from his perspective. But he definitely, definitely does not want you experiencing God’s freedom.
Because, you see, here’s the thing: if freedom, God’s freedom is something out there, something that’s a great theory, something that preachers preach about, something that a handful of super Christians out there can maybe have, but something that is quite simply completely and utterly unattainable for you, then he knows he has you.
And let me tell you, there are a lot of so called Christians in that very boat. They know about freedom, they’ve seen others apparently living in freedom but it just doesn’t seem as though it’s ever going to happen in their lives. 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 8:
Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around looking for someone to devour.
It’s a powerful picture isn’t it? And deliberately so. In the book of Job we’re told in Job chapter 1, verse 7 that:
The Lord said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’ And Satan answered the Lord ‘From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down in it.’
So there he is, prowling around, walking up and down, just waiting to attack someone who is weak in their faith. Someone who doubts the promises of God, someone who’s come to the conclusion that the freedom they’ve heard about probably isn’t for them, it’s just never going to happen. Just like the lions in the wild, he’ll pick on the weakest victim and take them down to devour them. But, and this is a bit but, this is what God says about that. 1 John chapter 3, verse 8:
The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.
So when you feel powerless, when you feel weak, when you feel as though the devil is on your case, man, have I got some good news for you today? This Jesus in whom you believe is right there next to you, in fact in you, to destroy the works of the devil on your behalf. In your weakness, in your doubt, in your failings, all you need to do is to turn to him, to ask him, to look at him and he will, he will send the devil packing. He will breathe his freedom into your heart by his Spirit. He will stand for you, he will protect you. It’s just what Jesus does.
I have some good news for you today. You need never, ever, ever be afraid of the devil. To be sure though there’s a battle going on in the spiritual realm for your soul. Jesus came to save you and the devil wants to snatch that gift of eternal life, that gift of grace, that gift of freedom right out of your hands. And it’s absolutely true, there is a battle going on. This is how Jesus puts it: John chapter 10, verse 10 he says:
The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.
Someone asked me once, "What does it mean to have an abundant life?" Well, let me first say that the word Jesus used there literally means super abundant, it’s just that we don’t have an English equivalent for that. Suffice to say, it’s a really strong word, it’s a word that’s really over the top. So the question should be, "What does it mean to have a super abundant life?" It’s a life of freedom. If you read the rest of the parable in that chapter, Jesus talks about his sheep being able to come in and go out in safety, in protection, in freedom. John chapter 10, verse 9:
I am the gate; whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.
See that’s a great picture. It’s a picture of that abundant life. It’s a picture of freedom and safety to come in and to go out and to find pasture. But this battle Jesus is talking about in-between the thief and the true shepherd, it isn’t a battle of two equal and opposite forces, one of evil, one of good, don’t for one moment imagine that. Jesus goes on to make the point. He’s not some hired hand who runs away at the first sign of trouble. No, John chapter 10, verse 11 he says:
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
And so he did. He died and rose again to set you free. We go looking for freedom in all sorts of different places. Sometimes we let the devil lead us by the nose, being tempered into this or that. Sin always tarts itself up to look good, otherwise it wouldn’t be tempting. But Jesus, Jesus is the true shepherd and his sheep know his voice. I’m certain you can hear him speak as I share his words with you today.
And because he is the good shepherd, because he laid down his life for you, because he was raised again to give you a new life, you need never, ever fear the devil. Your freedom is secure. That’s the good news.
Maybe that’s still a bit difficult for you to believe. Now, let’s think about it this way. Let’s imagine that God loves you every bit as much as he tells you. After all, the evidence for that is pretty strong. John chapter 3, verse 16:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
If that’s true, do you think he’d allow the devil to rob you of the freedom that Jesus purchased for you on that cross? Do you image for one moment that God would allow that incredible act of sacrificial love to go to waste? There are people who believe in Jesus with all their hearts and yet they’re afraid that something they’ve done or something they might do one day will rob them of their freedom.
Come on, you hadn’t found yourself wondering at some point, "I wonder if I’m in, or not. You know, I wonder if God’s forgiven me, I wonder if when I finally stand before him I’ll pass the judgement." And can I tell you, the devil loves that. Because if he can get a toehold in your mind, he’ll work away to undermine your faith. And truly that’s why I believe God has brought us together today. Because he’s not going to allow that to happen.
Jesus said that if you continue in my word you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. So let’s do a bit of continuing, a bit of knowing, to set you free from any doubt. Romans chapter 8, verses 31-39:
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did even withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?
Who will bring any charge against God’s elected? It is God who justifies. Who is going to condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died, yes who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor anything present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything, in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Hey, that is powerful stuff isn’t it? Nothing whatsoever can separate you from the love of God in Christ. That means your freedom, your salvation, are absolutely secure.
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Freedom is a great concept. But I’m not all that much into concepts, unless they make an impact for good in my life and yours. So the thing that I want to discover is how … how can you and I actually live the life of freedom? Really!
Okay, so Jesus came to set the captives free, that’s what he said of himself. Luke chapter 4, verses 18-19:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. To let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
Hey, that sounds a lot like freedom to me. That’s the promise that Jesus holds out to you and to me. It’s great, but a lot of people who believe in him don’t experience that kind of freedom. So, either he was lying when he said that – I give that option a fairly low probability – or those people are doing something wrong, a much higher probability you’d have to say.
There’s a battle going on inside each one of us between living for Jesus and living for ourselves. You and I are essentially pretty selfish individuals and, if you’re anything like me, we have a propensity to go wondering off, living our lives for ourselves rather than for Jesus.
It’s almost as though we’ve been given freedom but we decide to head straight back into a prison again so compelling is this desire of ours to botch up our lives, that we need some help. Fortunately, that’s no surprise to God and it’s something that he’s already given us in the form of the Holy Spirit. Galatians chapter 5, verses 16-17:
Live by the Spirit I say and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to prevent you from doing what you want.
There’s the battle between what the Holy Spirit would do in our lives and what we would do of our own accord. And here’s what I’ve discovered: the things that I want to do end up robbing me of the freedom that Jesus wants to give, the freedom in fact that he’s already given me. And let’s face it, those things by and large, are not good things. Galatians chapter 5, verses 19 and 21:
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissentions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I’m warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Not a very salubrious list is it? I mean come on, God only tells us not to do the things that are going to hurt us. The things that are going to rob us of the freedom that Christ came to bring us. Listen to the Holy Spirit and he’ll keep you away from those things. He just will.
Do you know what I’ve noticed? The more I make a point of spending some quiet time with Jesus each and every day, the easier it is to avoid sin.
Most days, first thing in the morning – I’m a morning person you see, I always have been – I just spend a quiet half an hour or so with the door of my study closed and my Bible open. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. Now, often there are things on my mind: stresses, pressures, this isn’t going quite the way I’d like, there’s a struggle in a relationship over there, whatever.
It can get you down can’t it? The burden, the load, the pressure, and when you’re carrying that sort of stuff around you start behaving badly. You do, you get cranky, you get agitated, resentful. There’s bitterness in your heart perhaps. And man, on those days the devil is going to have an absolute field day with you.
But somehow in that quiet time with Jesus, he stills my heart. Invariably I end up walking away and starting my day with an incredible peace with this joy in my heart. And it’s much, much harder for the devil to attack me and to tempt me. Have you experienced that too? You see I think that what’s going on there is that the Holy Spirit is doing his work in us. Lifting God’s word off the page, etching it into our hearts so that it becomes part of who we are. And that, that bears fruit in your life as opposed to the rubbish that you and I are prone to carry on with. Paul goes on in Galatians chapter 5, verses 22-25 by contrast he says:
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. There is no law against such things and those belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
That fruit of God’s goodness just naturally grows out of those times with the Lord each day. I think, I think that’s what it is to walk in the Spirit. Look, I’ve tried doing it the other way, just racing off and doing it all by myself. But each and every time the devil trips me up. Each and every time he robs me of my peace and my joy. Each and every time I end up bound up in my old sinful ways again instead of living out the freedom that Jesus died and rose again to give me.
Jesus didn’t just do the whole cross and empty tomb thing for us 2000 years ago, he also sent his Spirit to live in us to make those things real, to make the freedom real. The question you have to ask yourself is, "Why do we imagine that we can go it alone?" Why do we rush into our day and try to do things in our own strength when we know, I mean, we know 100% that we’re going to fall flat on our faces. That the devil is going to attack us from every direction because he knows that our flesh is weak. Why do we do that? I don’t know but we do. People do it over and over again and then they wonder why they’re not experiencing the freedom that Jesus promised.
Think of it like this: you have electrical power running to your house. The Government or the electricity company have gone to a lot of trouble to string the power cables, to put up the generation plant, to supply the power to your house. But when you come home at night and it’s dark, you don’t switch the lights on. You bump into walls and doors, you complain about the darkness, it’s cold but you don’t switch the heater on. You complain about the fact that not only is it dark but it’s cold as well.
Okay, I get it, it’s a bit of a crazy example, but that’s my point. Because that’s exactly what so many people do. They believe in Jesus. God went to a whole bunch of trouble, not to mention pain and suffering, to set us free from the darkness and to give us the power to live our lives for him today. But we don’t want to tap into that power, we don’t, as it were, switch it on. We live dark, cold lives and then we wonder why it’s not working so well. Jesus said a few things about the Holy Spirit. One of them, John chapter 16, verse 13 was:
The Spirit will guide us into all truth.
Another, Acts chapter 1, verse 8 is that:
When the Holy Spirit comes upon us, we will receive power.
Gee, truth and power. Truth, isn’t that what Jesus said would set us free? Knowing the truth. Power, isn’t that what enables us to walk in that freedom? If this is getting under your skin just a little bit, then good. Because I know that God is calling you back to him today. Back to those quiet times each day, back to that intimate fellowship. Back to that place where He will fill you with his truth and his power. That’s how to lay hold of the freedom, that’s it.
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You know sometimes I come to the realisation that really, I’m a bit spiritually thick. Spiritually, I’m something of a slow learner. Maybe that’s why God has to take me through things over and over again, so that finally, I get it, that it’s all about His grace.
A good friend will always tell you the truth. In fact, I love the saying that a friend always stabs you in the front. There are plenty of people out there who will tell you nice things to your face and then go behind your back and whisper things about you, right? You have those people in your life; I have those people in my life. But a true friend is someone who stabs you in the front, someone who tells you how things really are. We don’t always like it, none of us likes criticism, but as you read in Proverbs chapter 27, verse 17:
Just as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
I have just a handful of people who do that for me in my life. I trust them, I know they have a good heart, I know they have my interests at heart. And so when they come to me and they have something difficult to say, as much as I’m like the next person, as much as I don’t really like criticism all that much either, I sit down, I listen, I evaluate and I take to heart what they have to say to me.
That’s the sort of relationship that the Apostle Paul had with the church in Galatia back there in the first century AD. I mean, he loved those guys; he’d been there at the beginning. He’d been the one who told them about the amazing grace of God through Jesus Christ.
But it wasn’t long until some Jewish Christians came along while Paul was away elsewhere, to convince the Galatians that this whole idea of grace was a nonsense. After all, all these freedoms that Paul had taught them about leads to loose living, no, no, go back to the old Jewish law. To circumcision, to tithing, to all the things you have to do to appease God.
After all, in many respects, you look around at all the other religions in the world and they’re all about appeasing one or more Gods. So Paul writes this to them: Galatians chapter 4, verses 8-11:
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now however, that you’ve come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits? How can you want to be enslaved to them again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years. I’m afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.
Let me hit you right between the eyes. Is that what you’re doing? Having heard about the grace you have in Jesus Christ, have you returned back to the old ways of following a bunch of rules? Because if you have, the work of Jesus Christ on that cross for you is being wasted. Completely wasted. When you think about it, what the Apostle Paul is trying to do, is to get his friends in Galatia to wake up to the truth.
There is such power in the truth and today I want to share something incredibly important with you about the truth. The truth. You see, in this world, people often don’t want to hear the truth. The truth often is incredibly inconvenient. It cuts across vested interests. We all struggle with the truth; we all want to sweep things under the carpet. The problem is that that doesn’t solve anything. In fact, often it just makes things worse.
When you think about it, Jesus was in the business of telling the truth. He told the religious leaders about the hypocrisy in no uncertain terms. And to common, ordinary folk he spoke about the truth that is all about setting us free. Sounds odd, doesn’t it? Have a listen to the way Jesus puts it. John chapter 8, verse 33:
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.’
A number of times, Jesus makes the point that he comes to set us free. And the place where you find that freedom is in the truth. In hearing his word, knowing his word, and taking it into our hearts as the truth.
Here’s the thing: you and I, we’re masters of self delusion. We’re all too ready to criticise others, come on, we are. But we want to cut ourselves plenty of slack, we want to make excuses for ourselves when deep down we know that what we’re thinking or saying or doing is wrong.
And when we get into that guilt trap then all of a sudden we find ourselves caught up in that whole cycle again of feeling unworthy. So we peddle harder to do better and there you have it, there you have it, you’re living a life trying to appease God by following a bunch of rules. Jesus died a gruesome death on the cross so that you and I wouldn’t have to do that. Jesus paid the price of all of our sins and mistakes. Colossians chapter 1, verses 13-14:
He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son in whom we have redemption: the forgiveness of sins.
I receive so many emails from people around the world who watch or listen to the programs that we produce here at Christianityworks. And one of the most common things I hear over and over again is that people don’t feel that they’re forgiven. They’re not experiencing God’s forgiveness and so they can’t forgive themselves for the things that they’ve done wrong. What an incredible burden to carry around all your life. And it’s that burden that Jesus came to set you free from. That’s the truth, but the question is, "How do we actually lay hold of that freedom?"
Well, as well as the word of God, there’s the Spirit of God. Freedom is such a precious thing. I talk about it a lot because so many people are caught up in the yoke of slavery. Slavery to their old ways, slavery to their sins, slavery to the things of this world, slavery to the expectations of success, slavery to that sense that I’m just not good enough and what’s more I never will be, slavery to well, just about anything. And yes the truth is important. That’s why Jesus said that if we continue in his word, if we believe what he says, that we will know the truth and that truth will set us free.
There you have it: freedom, great. But have you ever read those words in the Bible and thought to yourself, "Well, I see the words on the page, I can read them, I can even repeat them over and over again, but somehow they’re not real for me. They’re not penetrating my heart. I want to be free, I want to believe but it’s just not happening." Have you ever felt that? Well, you would be alone. The Apostle Paul was writing to his friends in Corinth this one time about this very thing. People, he said were getting caught up in the letter of the law but they weren’t experiencing what God was doing for them. 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 17-18:
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces see the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
Where do you find freedom? In the Spirit of God, in the Holy Spirit who is given to each person who believes in Jesus. Listen up, if you believe in Jesus then the Holy Spirit dwells in you. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there, right there in you, is freedom.
Father God, I pray that your Holy Spirit would bring that freedom to life in each one of us. Lord we know the theory but we long, we hunger, we yearn to experience your freedom. Dear Holy Spirit, make that sense of freedom real in our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
I’m believing with all my heart that God is about to do a mighty work in you. A work of freedom, a work of revealing to you, deep in your heart of hearts, the freedom that you have in Christ. Freedom isn’t a concept, it’s not a theory, it’s a reality. Jesus died to purchase that freedom for you. He rose again so that you can live out that freedom in your new life in him.
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Slavery. It’s not something we think about all that much. But so many people are enslaved … it’s just not funny. Freedom. From where God sits, it’s not so much being able to do what you want, it’s about being set free from the things that are holding you back.
Official figures tell us that there are around 21 million slaves on the earth today. That’s a shock isn’t it? Isn’t slavery a thing of the past? Surely? Well actually, no it’s not. And unofficial figures put it much higher at more like 100 million slaves on the earth today. It’s shocking to think of it but it’s true; there are that many people in slavery.
You might be thinking ‘Surely not.’ But the facts speak for themselves. But let me bring this even close to home. I wonder whether you would consider yourself as someone who to some extent, at least, is a person in slavery, a person in bondage.
Have a listen to this interesting exchange between Jesus and some Jews: God’s own people, men and women who consider themselves to be free. John chapter 8, verses 31-36:
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you’ll know the truth and the truth will make you free.’
They answered him, ‘We’re descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying you’ll be made free?’
Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the Son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you’ll be free indeed.’
Perhaps you’ve heard part of that quoted before, that Jesus came to set you free. But it’s interesting how the Jews of the day, in a sense took offence at what Jesus said. "We’re not slaves", they responded indignantly. "Sure you are", said Jesus. "You’re slaves to sin and that, that’s what I’ve come to set you free from." Jesus came to set us – you, me, everyone else who puts their trust in him – free from the slavery to sin that robs us not just of our lives here on this earth, but from a permanent place in the household of God.
I wonder what sin is robbing you, enslaving you, keeping you from being all that you can be, all that God made you to be. Come on, what sin has put you in the shackles of slavery? Because it’s that very sin, that very slavery that Jesus came to set you free from. Is it really worth it, the anger swirling around in your heart, the resentment, the dishonesty, the sexual sin, whatever it is in your life? Whatever your Achilles’ heel happens to be, whatever sin you’re hanging on to, is it really, really worth it?
Would you like to be set free? Because let me tell you, if Jesus sets you free, you’ll be free indeed. A few years after that, Paul the Apostle continued on with this whole metaphor, this whole discussion about slavery. So here’s a question, "Would you rather be a slave in your master’s household, or one of his children?" I mean, come on, wind the clock back to the first century when the Apostle Paul posed that question to his friends in Galatia. Galatians chapter 4, Verses 1-7:
My point is this: heirs as long as they are minors are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property. But they remain under guardian and trustees until the date set by the father.
So it is with us: while we were minors we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
OK, what’s Paul’s point? There was a time when we were acting as minors. Yeah, you know how kids are, they don’t want to listen to their parents, they think they know better. When they become teenagers they roll their eyes in the back of their head when mum or dad tells them to do something. Ha, you’ve been there? Me too. And at that point, children are no better than slaves. They remain under guardianship, under a bunch of rules and regulations. Almost like slaves in a sense. They’re not free. When you’re a child, whether at home or at school, you’re told to do something and you have to do it.
And that’s what religion is all about. It’s about following a bunch of rules that quite simply is not freedom. But then God sent Jesus to redeem us from those rules. The idea of redeeming a slave was to pay a price to his or her master to set them free, to buy them out of their slavery. In a very real sense, that’s exactly what Jesus did. That’s why he’s able to say, "If I set you free, you’ll be free indeed."
So how many people today believe in Jesus but they aren’t living in the freedom that he purchased for them? I wonder, are you one of those? Are you still trying to follow a bunch of rules, kicking and bucking against them, wondering why you constantly fall short? Or do you wake up each morning, open your eyes and remember in your heart that you are a child of the living God because Jesus set you free?
Because that’s exactly what he did. He set you free from the rules and from your inability to keep those rules. Look, this isn’t some theory lesson; this is real. It’s about the sort of life that you’re living; it’s about how you feel each morning when you wake up. It’s about whether you look forward to the next day with a sense of anticipation or a sense of foreboding. You were made to live in freedom and Jesus came to set you free.
Now perhaps you’re kind of sitting there thinking to yourself, "Well, I don’t feel like a slave." Sure you don’t. Let me tell you, back before I met Jesus I wouldn’t have used that term about myself: slave, child, under a bunch of rules. Those weren’t ideas that swirled around in my head. But let you tell me what did. It was a sense that I was never good enough.
No matter how well I performed, how well I did at school or at university or at work or in my career, in where I lived, in what I earned, what house I lived in, what car I drove. I always had this nagging sense that I wasn’t good enough. I was trying to live up to something, to impress someone without ever really knowing why.
Have you ever felt that? At the same time, lurking deep down inside somewhere, was the knowledge that I wasn’t good enough for God. That’s what kept me away from him all those years. Just knowing somehow that I wasn’t good enough for God. Now there are people who believe in Jesus, who are living their lives that way.
Trying to impress the world, striving so hard to impress God, to obey the rules. But that’s not the sort of life we should be living. That’s not the freedom that Jesus purchased for us on the cross. He set us free from all that. He put his Holy Spirit in us so that we can wake up every morning, remember who we are, children and heirs of the living God, set free because of Jesus.
You know, I make mistakes every day, so I get up, dust myself off, ask God’s forgiveness through Jesus, move on, and enjoy the freedom that’s mine because my dad in heaven loved me enough to send Jesus his Son to set me free. How about you?
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Yeah we know about grace, we've heard about grace, it's a good thing but deep down inside, in our heart of hearts most of us harbour a sneaking suspicion that this whole 'God' thing surely has to come down to following a bunch of rules, right?
If I were to ask you, "are you living under a curse?" What would your answer be? I guess perhaps if you're going through some tough times you might be tempted to say yes but just for a moment set your circumstances aside, forget what's going on around you, in your relationship with God are you living under a curse?
Now that may seem like rather an odd question but actually a good many people who say they believe in Jesus are doing exactly that, they're living under a curse. A curse that God wants to remove from your life today, Galatians chapter 3 verses 10 and 13:
For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse for it is written 'cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law. But:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us for it is written 'cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree'.
That word curse is a very strong word. If someone says to you 'I curse you' that's pretty offensive, you take that pretty seriously. There's a venom, a sense of evil, a sense of fear, foreboding in that word curse.
Well, now listen this to this very carefully, God is saying to you today that if you're living your life under the lie that you can only be in His favour if you perform, if you deliver the goods, if you follow the rules. If that's how you're living your life God is saying to you today that you are living under a curse.
That's very strong and the reason I'm being so blunt and so direct with you on this is that God is making a powerful point to you and me today. But with the bad news comes the good news. They call it the Good News but frankly I think it's stunningly Good News, it's fantastic news, it's sensational news.
Jesus took that curse on His shoulders when He died for you. He became a curse for you as He hung on that cross so that you could be set free. Listen to me, stop living under the curse of trying to follow the rules and start enjoying the freedom that you have in Christ. Start enjoying the fact that God has put His Holy Spirit in you. Start enjoying the fact that you're forgiven, that God has a plan for your life, a good plan.
Back in the Old Testament it says that:
The joy of the Lord is your strength.
Have you heard the Good News today? Then enter into that joy, experience that joy, live in that joy, the curse has been removed, you are forgiven, you are free. That's fantastic news.
And yet we still struggle with this whole 'grace' thing don't we? Grace, Gods grace is such a difficult concept to wrap your heart around. Even if you can wrap your mind around it, wrapping your heart around it, believing in the grace of God is so hard because we don't live in a world of grace.
We live in a world that measures you on your performance. A world that says, "if you're wealthy, if you have a good job, if you live in a big house, if you drive a nice car then you're successful, then you have value, THEN you have worth." And the flip side of that coin is true too. If you don't measure up, if you don't deliver, if you don't fit into the world's mould of success, if you're not good looking and well dressed then you don't have much worth at all.
In fact all too often if you can't do something for people they just discard you, pass you by, throw you on the trash heap. So we have a performance mind set, we've been taught to equate performance measured by the world's scale, with value. That's the basic lie we live with and can I say even as Christians we kind of have this belief that what comes first in the Bible is the law of the Old Testament, the rule book if you will and it was only later that this idea of God's grace, made active in our lives through faith, came about.
Law first then grace but actually that's not true, that's putting the cart before the horse. Have a listen, the Apostle Paul, Galatians chapter 3 verses 6 to 8:
Just as Abraham 'believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness' so you see those who believe are the descendents of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify Gentiles by faith declared the Gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, 'all the Gentiles shall be blessed in you'. For this reason those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.
Now the point Paul makes a few verses later in that chapter is that this whole 'Abraham believed God and it was reckoned as righteousness' thing happened a full four hundred and thirty years before the Old Testament law was given to Gods people through Moses. So let's get the horse before the cart, grace through faith in what God says always came first, always. Grace, the free unmerited favour of God. It's just who God is. It's born out of the incredible love He has for you and me.
The world wants you to perform, to deliver, to be measured by its rule of success and frankly religion is about performing and delivering too. But what God has for you today is His grace and grace always, always comes first. So let me ask you; if God is the God of grace and when you see what Jesus did for us on the cross there could be no doubt about that, then why did He introduce the Old Testament law? Why did God even entertain a bunch of rules that at the end of the day His people would simply be incapable of keeping?
It's an important question to know the answer to because it's all too easy to slip back into that old way of thinking, that following Jesus is all about adhering to a set of rules. So here's Gods answer through the Apostle Paul, Galatians chapter 3 verse 19 and 23 to 26:
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring would come to whom the promise had been made. Now before faith came we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come we are no longer subject to the disciplinarian for in Christ Jesus you are children of God through faith.
So the Old Testament law was only ever put there as a temporary measure until God was ready to reveal His grace, through faith, in the coming of Jesus Christ. It was put there to keep people in line I guess until God was ready to reveal Jesus. And when you look back at the history of Israel throughout the Old Testament, from beginning to end, the thing that stands out is that God's people couldn't seem to keep the law for very long at all.
In fact the very name Israel means 'to struggle with God'. The whole story of the Old Testament is about Israel struggling to keep the law, struggling in their relationship with God. God sent them Prophet after Prophet to call them back to Himself. He punished them over and over again to bring them to their senses and for a little while that would work until they wandered off again.
If you ask me, "what's the central theme, the central point of the Old Testament?" My answer would simply be this; but try as they might Gods people couldn't stick to the rules. We can't follow the law. We'll never be able to put ourselves into a right relationship with God simply by following the rules.
The whole of the Old Testament screams out at us, "this isn't working, there has to be another way". And there is! That's why God sent Jesus. That was always the plan. The whole point of the Old Testament struggle for you and me today is to teach us beyond any shadow of a doubt that following the rules simply doesn't work, what's more it never will and that's why we need Jesus.
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Let's face it, grace is a difficult concept to wrap your mind around. Maybe you get as far as the theory but the practice, actually living as though Gods grace in your life is real, well that's a whole different thing.
Have you ever tried to work yourself into Gods favour? You try and you try to do the right thing but still you just mess it up. Well if you've been there you're not alone. There's a fine line between responding to God’s grace and falling into the trap of trying to work your way into His favour. Here's how it happens:
At some point you realise what an amazing thing God did for you by sending Jesus to die for you on that cross. Amazing! And so you turn your life over to Him lock, stock and barrel. There's a joy, a euphoria almost but then life gets back to normal. You go back to your day to day business and you slip back into your old habits, the sin that's been robbing you of joy and peace for most of your life creeps back and guilt sets in.
So you say to yourself 'self, you have to do something about this, there are standards here, there are rules, I shouldn't be doing this, I shouldn't be doing that'. You start to work at it harder and harder and harder and before you know it you're pedalling so hard that it's just about killing you. Yet still that old sin keeps on tripping you up.
My hunch is that you know exactly what I'm talking about. Jesus promised you freedom but this doesn't feel like freedom. That's because it's not. Have a listen to what the Apostle Paul writes about trying to follow a set of rules, Galatians chapter 2 verses 15 and 16:
We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ and we have come to believe in Christ Jesus so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by doing the works of the law because no one will be justified by the works of the law.
I am my father's son not because I followed a bunch of rules and worked my way into that position, no, I am my father's son because he is my dad and I'm his son. And as I grew up in that relationship my behaviour matured and improved as a response to his love not because I was good at following rules which by the way I wasn't.
The moment you and I put our faith in Jesus God becomes our Father and the more we grow in that relationship, the closer we get to Him the more we experience His love and the more our behaviour changes. See it's not about following a bunch of rules, it's about trusting Jesus and as we experience His love first hand, allowing His love, His grace, His mercy to change us, to set us free in a way that following a bunch of rules never ever will.
It turns out that living in freedom has everything to do with Jesus. A Scripture that is really familiar to many people is this one:
It's no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.
But as familiar as that may be to many I wonder whether we truly realise what it means. Freedom is such an elusive concept for us, we want it, we chase it but very few ever really experience it and I mean that especially for people who believe in Jesus. Because deep down inside most of us have this nagging sense that we're simply not good enough.
In fact the more you grow in your relationship with Jesus the more you see your own weaknesses and failings, it's just how it happens. The closer you draw in a rich dynamic relationship with Jesus the more aware you become, the more sensitive your spirit becomes to the things that break that fellowship. And sin, sin always disrupts the closeness, the intimacy between you and God, right?
I believe that God wants to deal with this in your life today, Galatians chapter 2 verses 19 to 21:
I have been crucified with Christ and it's no longer I who live but it is Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God for if justification comes through the law then Christ died for nothing.
So what's God saying to us today through His Word? Quite simply this; the moment you accept Jesus into your life the old you has died, the old you was nailed to a cross. That's the effect of making Jesus your Saviour and the Lord of your life. The whole point of Jesus suffering there for you on that cross was and is to set you free from the old you and give you a new life, a radically completely abundantly new life. So in Gods eyes it's no longer the old you who lives but Christ who lives in you.
If you believe in Jesus you have a complete and perfect right standing with God, not because of what you've done but because of what Jesus has done for you despite what you've done. In fact because of what you've done that's why Jesus died for you, that's the whole point, that's why they call this the Good News. You and I, in and of ourselves will never ever be good enough to stand before God, if we were who'd need Jesus, if we were then Jesus died for nothing?
But as it is we're not and what’s more we never will be but that's completely irrelevant because it's no longer you or I who live - that old person is dead and gone but Christ who lives in us. So let me challenge you today about some of the old habits that may be robbing you of that freedom that Christ came to give you.
The older I get the more I realise what a creature of habit I am. We all have routines, little rituals that play themselves out day after day. In the morning when I get up I always shave before I clean my teeth, it's never the other way around, I never clean my teeth first and then shave, I couldn't imagine doing it that way.
Why? Well its habit, it's routine. I'm sure that you have silly little rituals as well, we all do and one of the habits we want to fall back into is believing that the only way we can be in Gods favour is to work hard at it. Now if you've believed in Jesus for any length of time you'll have heard sermon after sermon after sermon about Gods grace.
What's grace? The free unmerited favour of God. I'm guessing you've heard that definition on more than one occasion and grace is such a great concept, the theory of it is so elegant, so simple, in fact deep down we suspect it's just too good to be true.
I was staying with a man recently, a real man of God who shared something with me of his past, something he regretted, something he was ashamed of and I could tell in his heart of hearts he still wasn't over it, he still hadn't really forgiven himself for it and I'm guessing that in his heart of hearts he believed that it was still an issue for God too. You get that right?
Well check this out, this is the Apostle Paul's reaction, his response to that old habit, Galatians chapter 3 verses 1 to 5:
You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified, the only thing I want to learn from you is this, did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish having started with the Spirit are you now ending up with the flesh?
Did you experience so much for nothing, if really it was for nothing? Well then does God supply with the Spirit and work miracles among you by doing the works of the law or by believing what you have heard?
See, they had the same problem as you and me. They were always wanting to fall back to the old ways of working their way into Gods favour through what they did rather than knowing for sure, deep in their hearts that they were already in Gods favour because of what they believed. Knowing absolutely 100% that God had completely forgiven them absolutely.
Listen to me; if you believe in Jesus then you are drenched in the grace of God, in the free, unmerited favour of God today and for all eternity. That's freedom.
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One of the things that robs us of freedom are our old habits. Old ways of thinking, old ways of behaving and you know those old habits; they can be more difficult to shake than you might think.
Okay the subject for today is circumcision. I know it's not exactly something you want to be thinking about but stick with me, there's an important point to be made. And what we're really chatting about is freedom, your freedom here, now, today. But first let's head back to 1st century Jerusalem.
See there's a rocky transition underway for those who believe in Jesus, from Judaism, the religion of their forefathers, to Christianity. From a life lived under a complex set of religious rules to a life of freedom in Christ. A lot of the things that seem pretty obvious to us today had to be nutted out back then, it wasn't easy.
One of them was male circumcision which to this point had been part of God's law for His people. Let's take a look at how the Apostle Paul puts it in Galatians chapter 2 verses 3 to 5:
But even Titus who was with me was not compelled to be circumcised though he was a Greek. But because of false believers secretly brought in who slipped in to spy on the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus so that they might enslave us, we did not submit to them even for a moment so that the truth of the Gospel might always remain with you.
See there's a tussle here between the old traditionalists who didn't believe in this whole nonsense about grace through Jesus and Paul to whom the Gospel of grace, the fantastic news of Gods unmerited favour towards us had been revealed by Jesus Himself. Circumcision was just the flash point, the real debate was between the slavery of living under the set of rules and the freedom that we have through our faith in Christ.
And it's a struggle that continues to this day in the heart of many a believer because grace is so radical, so counterintuitive. We live in a 'dog eat dog' world and there seems to be plenty of 'dog' to go around. Yet along comes Jesus and says in effect:
Look it's not about following a bunch of rules, it's about experiencing my love and so that you can I'm going to pay the price on a cross for all the things that you've done wrong in your life.
The reason Paul takes this so seriously is that it strikes at the very heart of the Gospel of grace, the truth. Besides have you noticed? It's pretty much impossible to follow the rules anyway, we all fall short, that's why we need Jesus. So if you've been struggling under a bunch of rules do yourself a favour, ditch them. Go to Jesus instead; start having a rich dynamic relationship with Him and your unbounded freedom will flow out of that relationship. Don't let rules enslave you!
And you and I, we aren't the only ones that suffer from this problem. Take Peter the Apostle, we think of Peter as one of the New Testament's 'A' list yet he made quite a few mistakes along the way not the least of which was political correctness. This age of rampant political correctness isn't something new in the 21st century, it turns out that there's nothing new under the sun.
Now look, it's absolutely a good idea that we shouldn't deliberately go out there to say or do things that will hurt others but it's a very bad idea to take that to the ridiculous nth degree, to the point where we curtail our freedoms in order to appease those with a agenda.
And that's exactly what was going on in the first century as Christianity was being birthed out of Judaism. There was a tussle between the two; there were difficult issues to work through. For instance, most Jews believed that the God of the Old Testament was for them and them alone. Many of the Apostles stayed in Jerusalem for that very reason but Paul was called to be an Apostle to the Gentiles, to take the good news of salvation in Jesus to people whom the Jews referred to as dogs.
So Peter is happy to dine with the Gentiles until some other legalistic old school Jews show up at which point he does the politically correct thing, retreating only to eat with Jews again. Well at this point Paul pretty much has a pink fit, Galatians chapter 2 verses 11 to 13:
But when Cephas (that's Peter's other name) came to Antioch I opposed him to his face because he stood self condemned. For until certain people came from James he used to eat with the Gentiles but after they came he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction and the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy so even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
To the extent that you believe in Jesus you are free in Christ to live out your faith. Sure in this age of political correctness, this age of pluralism you will be derided for it, you'll be laughed at for it, you'll even be persecuted for it but let Peter's mistake be a lesson to us all - let's not be hypocrites, let's not compromise our freedom in Christ to appease the sinners of this world.
Sure, the issues of today are different but the principle remains the same. People will disagree with you because you believe in Jesus, they just will, there's nothing new in any of that. Live out your faith in Jesus anyhow. Don't let the fear of what others will think or say or do rob you of the freedom that you have in Christ, don't let your life compromise the truth of the Gospel of grace.
Isn't it funny how our old ways keep coming back to haunt us. Peter spent three and a half years with Jesus, he saw the miracles, he heard the sermons, he experienced the radically different way that the Son of God would approach things.
Jesus wasn't afraid of upsetting the religious leaders, Jesus wasn't afraid of offending people yet still Peter falls back into his old ways, no wonder Paul took him on, it's a good thing and as I said it's a sobering lesson to you and me about the power of the old ways to rob us of the freedoms that Jesus came to give us. Jesus said that if He sets us free then we are free indeed. Don't throw that freedom away so easily.
Alright so today we've looked at the old ways, the old rules as they were back then in the 1st century. Circumcision well you'd have to agree it's not such an issue anymore really, at least I hope it isn't in your life and then there's the people we associate with, well that's still an issue today isn't it?
One of the things I try to do as much as I can is eat meals with people who aren't believers, to associate with people who don't go to Church, to spend time out there in the world sometimes at the expense of time, involved in Church activities. In fact really, I feel called to be a minister outside the four walls of a Church rather than inside.
Hey Church is great but just as God called Paul to take the Gospel to the Gentiles, I guess in the same way He's called me to take the Gospel outside the Church. And you wouldn't believe the criticism I cop for that sometimes. I wonder what it is in your life. What religious norms, what rules are people trying to get you to submit to? What criticism are people hurling in your direction? It's amazing how quickly and how easily people want to turn the Gospel of grace and freedom into a bunch of religious rules.
Now God's Word is replete with wisdom about how to live. God tells us the things that are wrong, the things we shouldn't do, actually there aren't that many of them surprisingly enough but don't get suckered in, as the Apostle Paul writes: For freedom you have been set free. And that freedom was purchased at such a huge price.
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Freedom sounds like such a wonderful thing and it is. So why is it then that so few people experience true freedom in their lives? It turns out there are plenty of things that would rob you of your freedom, plenty.
Freedom is a tricky thing. So often we are our own worst enemy, our perspective, our thoughts, our behaviour, they all rob us of this elusive thing called freedom. Try as we might we just can't grasp it. You've had that experience right, you know what it's like? There's something in your make up, an Achilles heel if you will, that's constantly your undoing.
For each one of us it's something different but at the end of the day it trips you up again and again and again. Mine is perfectionism which has a tendency to fuel anger. Yours? Well you probably know what it is, maybe its insecurity, gossiping, a lack of compassion, selfishness; hey the list runs as long as my arm and then some.
God has a simple name for it, He calls it sin. The devil loves to rub your nose in it and just when you're feeling weak or tired, emotionally spent he pushes your button and there you go again. For the Apostle Paul it was an obsessive hatred of the Church. He was of course a Pharisee in the Jewish religion when Jesus came along and turned everything he'd ever believed in, everything he'd ever worked so hard for, completely upside down. No wonder he hated Christians.
But then, then he met Jesus and something changed in him. People were talking about it, Galatians chapter 1 verse 23:
... They only heard it said, "The one who was formerly persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy” And they glorified God because of me.
And he had been too, he was a terrible persecutor of the Church until that day he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. You can read about it in the Book of Acts chapter 9. Okay so he met Jesus but what happened to turn him from a man breathing threats against the early Church to the guy who ultimately wrote almost half the Books of the New Testament.
That's quite a turn around you'd have to admit. I'll tell you what happened - Jesus changed his heart. You know and I know that when we have a change of heart our thoughts and our actions flow out of that just as God promised in the days of old through Ezekiel chapter 11 verses 19 and 20:
I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them.
When you encounter Jesus on your road, when you draw close to Him, when His Spirit fills you to overflowing He does what you were powerless to do, He changes your heart which, as it turns out, changes everything. Sometimes though it feels as though nothing is happening, NOTHING.
So what? Has God forgotten me now? Has He left me on the shelf? We all want to feel as though God has some great plan for our lives so in those months, even years when nothing much seems to be happening it can be terribly disheartening.
Jesus: "I came to set the captives free”
You: "yeah right, it feels like you've forgotten me."
Other people, they seem to be powering on. You on the other hand feel as though there's nothing really exciting ahead.
Saul is on the road to Damascus, off to persecute some more Christians, he meets Jesus along the way, that's pretty exciting but then he loses his sight and for three days he's completely blind.
Now that doesn't sound like such a long time unless you've been struck blind in which case it probably feels like an eternity, adversity has a way of doing that. Which is why when you're feeling as though you've been left on the shelf it does seem like an eternity, am I right? Freedom? What's that? You ask yourself in this prison of inactivity.
When we get to that point there's something we need to be reminded of, it's what Paul says of himself in his letter to the Church of Galatia, Galatians chapter 1 verses 15 to 17:
But when God who had set me apart before I was born and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son to me so that I might proclaim Him among the Gentiles, I didn't confer with any human being nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already Apostles before me but I went away at once to Arabia and afterwards I returned to Damascus.
In other words God already had a plan for Paul even before he was born. Along the way people tried to kill the guy, they rioted against him, he was imprisoned, beaten, shipwrecked, bitten by a viper of all things and eventually he rotted out the remainder of his days in a Roman dungeon on death row.
But that powerful encounter with Jesus, that incredible revelation of Christ Himself when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, that changed everything because no matter how dire his circumstances became he knew that God had a plan. So in the middle of those difficult circumstances Paul had the freedom that Jesus promised.
You know God still has a plan, a plan for today, for tomorrow, next month, next year and indeed for the rest of your time on this earth. God hasn't forgotten you, He hasn't lost the plot. God has a plan and that fact gives you freedom even if you've been locked away in a dungeon or forgotten on a shelf. And that's a promise God wants you to take into your heart today. The only sort of hope the Bible talks about is certain hope so may the Holy Spirit write that hope on your heart.
One of the things I'm so passionate about is sharing God's Word with you in a way that makes sense. I'm sure I don't get that quite right every day but do you see how real, how practical, how powerful the Word of God really is? The problem is that all too often we don't take God seriously; we don't take God at His Word.
We read stuff in the Bible or we hear the stuff preached and we think, "ahh yeah, sure but....." But what? You don't think that God means to give you hope? You don't think that God is up to something good in your life, really? Well don't just believe me, listen to God’s Word again because I know that as it's spoken out the Holy Spirit will do the one thing that I cannot do, He'll write it on your heart. Jeremiah chapter 29 verses 11 to 14:
For surely I know the plans I have for you' says the Lord, 'Plans for your welfare and not your harm. To give you a future with hope, then when you call upon me and come and pray to me I will hear you. When you search for me you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart I will let you find me' says the Lord.
That's the Word of God spoken to a people who thought they'd been forgotten by Him, who thought they'd been left on a shelf but with God there's always hope because He will show up, He has set you free, He is ready to do things in you and through you than you can scarce imagine.
With all my heart I believe that He has put us together today to speak that truth into your heart. May you receive the powerful truth of His Word and may His Spirit breathe a certain hope into you that you have a future, a future of freedom in Christ. That's what I believe God wants you to receive today - hope, real hope and certain hope. Whether you take it or leave it, hey that's entirely your choice, only you can decide.
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Freedom is something we all want but before we go asking ourselves how do you get it or where do you get it, first it might be worthwhile figuring out exactly what it is because freedom, real freedom may not be what you think.
Most of us, I guess, would define freedom as being able to do whatever we want whenever we want. And that definition right there is what brings a whole world of pain crashing down on our lives. I don't think there's a single person on this planet who doesn't want to be free. Do you want to be free? Well of course you do, me too but if freedom is that important to us you have to ask yourself, exactly what is it?
Sure there's political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of association, the freedom to gather, to protest, to live where you want to live, to marry who you want to marry, to choose to have children or not. In this day and age we live in a world that's more and more fixated on our individual freedoms, our rights as individuals.
After all I'm entitled to enjoy my life, right? So it doesn't take too long to start imagining that freedom is being able to do whatever we want whenever we want. Anything that cuts across that is a restriction of our alienable right to be free. And yet if you travel to any place where that kind of freedom is practised what you discover is lawlessness and anarchy. There's no safety, there's no protection, there's no security because that 'anything anytime' kind of freedom is a terrible thing.
That's what the rule of law is all about, to keep us safe and secure. So when you think about it what we actually need is a different definition of freedom, one that really works. Try this one on for size, Galatians chapter 1 verses 3 to 4:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave Himself for our sins to set us free from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father.
It seems that God takes our freedom so seriously that He sent Jesus to suffer and die to set us free. From what? Well from our sin and from this evil age. So according to God real freedom, the sort of freedom that Jesus purchased for you on that cross is about setting you free from the devastating consequences of your sin and the evil that pervades every nook and cranny of this age so that you can live in grace and in peace.
Not such a bad definition when you think about it. So here's a question for you, what sin, what evil is robbing you of the freedom that Jesus came to give you because that sin, that evil is what God is calling you to hand over to Him today? His will for you is to be free to live in the grace and the peace of Jesus Christ.
But that's not always an easy thing to do. One of the things you discover when you set your heart on following Jesus is that the rest of the world is not going to be standing by and cheering you on. In fact far from it. Not long after I became a Christian, a few decades ago now, the IT consulting firm of which I was a partner had the opportunity to bid for a rather large government project in the developing world.
But the simple reality was that unless you paid the bribes to the various officials you were completely wasting your time in bidding. As you can imagine as a brand new Christian I was faced with a real dilemma and can I tell you I came under quite some pressure to compromise.
It happens in every corner of our lives because when you decide to believe in Jesus, when you decide to follow Jesus, when you decide to live your life for Him let me tell you the world is not going to be all that happy with you. They'll criticize you, laugh at you, persecute you, whatever fits best at the time.
You see those people want you to believe that their way is the way of freedom, of success, of enjoyment. The world wants you to believe that following Jesus somehow is going to rob you of your freedom. What do you believe? Who are you trying to please? Jesus? Or those naysayers around you?
Paul the Apostle made a very clear decision on that question in his life, Galatians chapter 1 verse 10:
Am I now seeking human approval or Gods approval or am I trying to please people? If I was still pleasing people I would not be a servant of Christ.
People are so fickle, have you noticed? Jesus did, that's why we're told in John chapter 2 verses 23 to 25:
When He was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival many believed in His name because they saw the signs that He was doing. But Jesus on His part would not entrust Himself to them because He knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone for He Himself knew what was in everyone.
At some point in every corner of our lives, in every thought, every decision, every action, each one of us has to decide who we're trying to please, people or God? And the way it tends to work is that it's not so much the big decision we make up front that matters, it's the little decisions that we make a hundred times a day that together tell us who we're really trying to please.
Come on, who are you trying to please with your life? Because if you're still seeking human approval, if you're still trying to please people you wouldn't be a servant of Christ.
Look to experience freedom, real freedom we need to stop focusing on the world. What we need is a spiritual revelation. The fact is that the freedom that only Jesus Christ can bring is a fantastic thing but whilst the facts are incredibly important you don't find freedom in facts.
The Apostle Paul was an interesting character. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling religious body in Jerusalem and there's a reason that he made it to the top of the pile, Philippians chapter 3 verses 4 to 6:
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrew's; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the Church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
So Pauls heritage, his breeding, his upbringing ticked all the right boxes. He studied the Old Testament law, he knew it from back to front, he worked hard at it, you know the sort of person. He had all the head knowledge that you could ask for, all the discipline that you could ever expect of anybody.
On top of that he was a Pharisee. Now this sect took the idea of following the law to incredible lengths. The very word 'Pharisee' means to be a religious separatist. He was absolutely full on and yet the one thing he didn't have was freedom until one day on the road to Damascus Jesus appeared to him and that encounter with Jesus was the turning point of his life. This is what he writes years later looking back on it, Galatians chapter 1 verses 11 to 12:
For I want you to know brothers and sisters that the Gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
So it wasn't something that he'd learned through years of study, it was a revelation. The original Greek word used there for revelation is the word 'apokolypsis'. In other words it was an apocalyptic revelation, dramatic, powerful, completely life changing.
And it wasn't a revelation about Jesus, it wasn't words from a book, come on Paul knew all those words in the Old Testament Books, he'd studied them for years, he'd made it to the top of the religious pile that way but that's not what changed his life. It wasn't a revelation about Jesus, it was a revelation of Jesus through a personal encounter with Him.
Have you had a apocalyptic revelation of the person of Jesus Christ? Have you had a dramatic, powerful, life changing encounter with Jesus? No, then get a revelation, Jesus is waiting for you now. He wants to turn your life upside down now. All the head knowledge in the world won't do that for you, only Jesus.
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So, when Jesus was choosing his disciples, he called them out of their businesses. Fisherman, tax collectors, and the like. He called them away from business into ministry. But could it be that these days Jesus actually calls people into business as well?
Berni: I had an interesting guy on the program quite a few years ago now who ran a big coffee franchise business and it was fascinating that neither he nor his business partner needed the money. They didn’t need the hassle; they didn’t need to be in business. They were doing it with one purpose and one purpose alone and that was to fund Christian ministry around the world.
Alex: Fantastic. And that’s one of the defining features I think of a kingdom business. Is that it has a purpose beyond profit. Profit is essential by a long way. Absolutely.
Alex: You need to make a profit or you won’t have a business for very long.
Berni: Profit’s not a dirty word.
Alex: No, it’s a good thing.
Berni: It’s a good thing. What’s a kingdom business look like? Someone’s sitting there thinking I’d love to run my own web design business or my own digital marketing business. And when it ... I want to be a builder or a plumber. What does a kingdom business look like?
Alex: Yeah, well let’s think about the word kingdom for a moment. So a kingdom implies that there’s a king. And for Christians the king is Jesus. So when it comes to your business the king of your business and the CEO of your business is in fact Jesus. And we are his servants of that kingdom. So it’s having a very different way of looking at that business. Because the thing about business I think in the church in the past is we’ve seen business as a secular activity.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: You go along to work. OK if you’re a Christian you should be a person that operates according to integrity but you use the money to fund ministry. But the reality is that a kingdom business is a ministry.
And so the perspective that Christians who have their own business or who are in business in general, they need to come to realisation that they in fact are in ministry. That is what a kingdom business is about; it’s an actual ministry.
Because if you’re a Christian you are in ministry, it just depends on where you’re at. We all may have different jobs but the clergy’s not the only ministry. A kingdom business is in fact a ministry.
Berni: We have this sort of dualistic view of the world that over here we do prayer and church and singing and Bible reading and stuff, that’s all the holy stuff. And over here we do work and taking the kids to soccer, and that’s all the profane stuff. And we separate those two, particularly in Western culture but you don’t find that in the Bible, do you?
Alex: No, exactly right. I mean, everything is spiritual.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: I think we’ve somehow compartmentalised our life and we need to change that. You know, God should be through every aspect of your life ...
Berni: So ...
Alex: Business included.
Berni: Everyone who’s listening today who has a business, a Christian business, you’re actually in ministry. That’s a pretty exciting perspective. So if they‘re in ministry, does God move supernaturally in business? I mean can you do business supernaturally?
Alex: Absolutely, and look the thing about the word supernatural. Break it into two. We have a responsibility to do the things in the natural, we actually have to do something, actually have to turn up to things in order for your business to actually function and to perform.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: God does the super. OK, now the way I like to tell people is through an example in my own life. I was in the United States back in February this year and I was attending a conference called the National Religious Broadcasters Conference. Our intention was to try and work out how we could get on US radio.
A funny thing happened. I was standing in the men’s toilet. There washing my hands and standing beside me is a well-known talk show host in the United States. And ... who I really admire because he deals with a lot of the controversial issues going on in the US. So I got chatting to him and, you know, he started asking questions about what I did. And I told him that I was there to try and work out how I could get on US radio. And he goes to me, ‘Well do you want to go on in 30 minutes?’
So here I was thinking that I would be on US radio maybe in three or four months’ time after I’d met a few contacts, started to build relationships and so forth. And God got me on radio half an hour later. And ...
Berni: God can do some amazing stuff, hey?
Alex: Yeah and I think it came from two things. One was me turning up and actually being there.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: And the second thing though was that every day my wife and I, because my wife was with me, we prayed that God would open the right doors and close the wrong ones. And that’s one thing I do and that’s ... that can apply to your business in many ways. Ask God, ‘God can you open the right doors to the right customers, to the right people? And close the wrong ones.’
Berni: Now can I ask you, what’s been your greatest challenge being a Christian businessperson?
Alex: I think the greatest challenge for me would be relying on my own strength. I’m by nature a hardworking person. I’ve always loved work and loved most of the jobs that I’ve had. I find that my natural tendency is to do things by my own strength and work hard. And when there’s a problem just push harder.
Berni: I’m nodding here, by the way, I’m relating a lot to this.
Alex: For me the biggest challenge has been to get myself back to depending on God.
Berni: How do you do that? What does that mean actually?
Alex: For me it’s been about focussing on my relationship with God. So probably when I first went in to the business world what I would do is I would read the Bible on the way to work in the morning. I’d read it on the bus and maybe ...
Berni: I’m happy you weren’t driving here, right?
Alex: No. And so you know I’d pray for a few minutes and I’d read the Bible on the bus. But what I’ve done now is I now get up much earlier. I get up at five. I probably spend ... and this is not about time and it’s not about bragging either by the way. But I get up, I spend ideally between half an hour to an hour in prayer, in worship, just worshipping God with Christian songs. And just praying and seeking God.
So I do that each day but then the other thing I do is half a day a week I actually go to a ... I live in Buenos Aires in Argentina so I go to a lovely coffee shop that ...
Berni: I thought you had a bit of an accent, there. I thought that. It’s Argentinian, right? OK, go on.
Alex: So I go to a place where there’s a golf course on one side, a beautiful path on river on the other.
Berni: It’s tough on the mission field isn’t it?
Alex: It’s rough, you know, I’m suffering for Christ. And I spend an hour just walking around this lake, just in prayer. And just asking God for help. And then I spend a couple of hours just reading through His word. Taking notes, jotting things down, writing things – Oh I want to know more about this and so forth. And just building that relationship with God. And asking questions and asking for His help.
Thing is, God actually care about all your affairs. And He wants to be involved in your business. He wants you to do well, He wants you to ... to guide you. So that you can use all these things He’s given you to honour Him and glorify Him. And so that radical intimacy is how you build dependency on God.
Berni: I love that term radical ... radical intimacy. So many people know about God but don’t know God.
Alex: It's a big, big problem.
Berni: It's a big, big issue. In fact, what we’re going to do in a moment is we’re going to pray for you. One piece of advice for the aspiring Christian business person: what is it?
Alex: Well, I think it sort of comes back to what we were just saying there – If you’re going into business you need God on your side. You need Him as your CEO and, if you like, your business partner. And so the only way that’s going to happen is if you spend time with Him. A lot of people think that ... that by spending that time they’re actually losing that time. It’s time they could be doing business.
Berni: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alex: But it’s the exact opposite. That’s when the supernatural can occur. Because if you don’t spend the time with God the supernatural won’t occur. By having that radical intimacy and complete dependency you’ll have an amazing kingdom business.
Berni: Father God, I pray for anybody who’s listening today who wants that radical intimacy with you. Lord, I just pray that you would take what Alex has spoken to us and by your Spirit you would write it on our hearts. Lord, you would fill us with a hunger, with a desire, with a thirst, to have that relationship so that we wouldn’t be put off with religious rituals.
But Lord, you would build something in us by your Spirit that desires you above all other things. Lord, your people … your people hunger for you, your people desire you. Would you bless us with your presence? In Jesus’ mighty name.
Now Alex before I let you go. wealthwithpurpose.com?
Alex: Yes, that’s right.
Berni: wealthwithpurpose.com. You want to find out some more of the great teaching that Alex has got, it’s all on that website. I’d really encourage you to go and check it out. Because God wants to do some amazing things with you and with your finances and with the call that he’s placed on your life. Amen.
Alex: Amen.
Berni: Alex it’s been great to have you on the program the last couple of weeks. God bless you, mate.
Alex: My pleasure, Berni. Thanks for having me.
Berni: Yeah that’s great stuff. Thanks mate, it’s been a real pleasure to have you on the program these last couple of weeks, really.
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We often think of our money, our house, our car, our stuff as being ours. And yet God’s perspective is that every good gift that you and I have been given has been given to us by him. And he’s given it to us with a very specific purpose in mind.
Berni: Alex, welcome to the program.
Alex: Hi Berni, great to be with you.
Berni: Now we’ve kind of touched on this a little bit over the last week and a bit. But exactly from where you sit, what is stewardship?
Alex: Yeah. Stewardship in its very simple terms simply means managing something on behalf of somebody else.
Berni: OK.
Alex: So, from a Christian perspective, God has given us a few different things that we need to steward. And I call it the three ‘T’s: your time, your talent and your treasure. So when we think about those things that God has given us, with all of those things if you like, they have an element of - they’re limited in some way.
And so we need to ... you know, we’ve only got so much time in our life. How are we going to use that time wisely for God?
How are we going to use our talents, so we’ve got skills that God’s given us? How are you going to honour God with those skills you’ve got?
And then of course your finances. How are you going to use the money that God’s given you to manage it on His behalf with His purposes? Because often when we think of money we often think of it as this is my money. You know, I’ve worked hard for it. And therefore that can shape our behaviour in a way that’s very, you know, selfish. Whereas actually God’s saying, ‘Well actually the money is really mine. I’ve given it to you, blessed you with it, how are you going to use it to honour me, to glorify me?
Berni: I always find it interesting, and I’m not being judgemental at all, but you go to church on Sunday morning and you sing these songs God you’re first, God you’re wonderful, God you’re everything else. And then the offering comes round, right. And often people think of what you put in the offering is the loose change in your wallet or your purse.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: What have I got? Oh yeah I’ve got this much I’ll throw that in today. Or I’m going out for lunch; I’ve got to keep some back. Now people’s finances are limited and I know some people who are not very well off who give incredibly generously.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: But there’s often this disconnect between what we say, what we profess to believe, what we sing, and what we actually do with the resources that have been given to us, hey?
Alex: Absolutely. And as you say, people are giving their spare change. And I think it’s because we don’t know how to manage money properly. So sometimes we might have the right intention but because we don’t know how to manage properly, God gets the spare change. You know, we may have lots of debt, we may not know where our money’s going. And so we manage it poorly. And so I think there’s lots of ways you can fix that.
Berni: You gave a great quote the other day on the program from Luther about conversion.
Alex: Yeah, so Martin Luther had this famous saying that is, ‘There are three conversions: the head, the heart and the wallet.’
Berni: Can I tell you the wallet was the hardest for me. Because when I became a Christian at age 36 I was an IT consultant jetting around the world. And I was earning rather a lot of money back then.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: And when I just looked at the concept of the tithe. And I’m the same as you, I don’t believe in some legalistic, you know, give God 10%. But tithing is a good place to start. A tenth of my income was an awful lot of money.
Alex: Money, yeah.
Berni: Right, so the more you earn, you’d think the easier it would be to give generously to God. But I found it harder.
Alex: I think it’s right because ultimately it’s a hard issue.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: And as you say you look at it and you say, ‘Oh wow, that’s such a large amount of money. How can I give that?’ In fact, the stats show that when you look at churches’ giving, often the amount of per capita giving in a wealthy suburb versus a poor suburb is exactly the same. Despite the fact that, in that suburb, the income has much, much higher levels. And I think it’s because of this constant tug of war that money has on our hearts.
Berni: So why should we, as people who believe in Jesus, aim to be great stewards?
Alex: Well I think it comes down to our purpose here. You know, we are here ... once you become a Christian your role, if you like, is to glorify God with everything that you have, all that you are. And that of course includes your money. Now I also believe very strongly that every person on the planet has a calling, you have an assignment. God has something for you to do.
Berni: It’s interesting. I mean you’ve figured out your calling: ‘Wealth with Purpose’.
Alex: That’s right.
Berni: Right. Helping Christians to manage their money in a godly way, putting God first. I have my calling which is doing what I’m doing now. Normally I don’t have someone like you in the studio with me but ... that’s my calling and I can’t image not doing that. Some people don’t know what their calling is.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: Right ...
Alex: That’s right.
Berni: And they strongly ... they hear of God and ... you know where God’s putting you, right?
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: What do you say to someone who doesn’t know what their calling is?
Alex: Well, I think you actually have to actively find it. And I think ... what I mean by actively, I mean you have to become radically intimate with God. You know one of the things that God wants from us is just a relationship with us. He created us for relationship. And so the way you find out your purpose is just spending time with God. And I don’t mean in any sort of ... it’s not just some sort of legalistic thing and you just tick another box.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: It’s actually genuinely knowing God and what His purposes for you are. Because when you’re filled with the Spirit, God is going to guide you and you know, kind of gently push you along in the direction that He wants you to go. But that’s only going to happen if you’re asking for His help, His guidance and His direction.
Berni: And being willing to lay it all down including ...
Alex: Surrender.
Berni: Yeah. Including, as we’re talking about right now, our finances.
Alex: Absolutely, and look, the thing about stewardship is ultimately we’re going to have to give an account of everything that God’s given us: our time, our talent, our treasure. But we’re going to be giving an account.
Berni: So what’s a good steward look like? What should I be aspiring to, to be a good steward of the resources God’s given me?
Alex: Well it starts first with the mindset. And the mindset firstly I think is twofold. One is that you acknowledge everything you have is God’s. And that you’re going to put God first. And once again we’ve talked about this – that’s easy to say, it’s another thing to actually do it. But it does start with that mindset. If you don’t have that mindset, then it’s very hard to become an actual steward. Because the thing about money, and this is a very important point, is how you think about money shapes your behaviour with money. So you’ve got to have the thinking part right first.
Then we can look at some of the more practical things. People often say live within their means, I actually say you need to live beneath your means.
Berni: Yeah, amen.
Alex: And so when we look at the simple things like budgeting. I say the first 10% should be given to God, as a recommended minimum if you like.
Because you mentioned before how at church the plate goes round and people put in their spare change. It’s because they haven’t done a budget, they have no idea how much they’ve got, and so they just give what’s quickly available.
But your giving should actually be quite planned, quite well thought out and you should have sought God about how much you should give. Because a person who’s a good steward is sacrificially generous.
Berni: Let’s talk about that. That’s really important. Luke chapter 21, verses 1 to 4. Jesus is standing outside the temple with his disciples, the widow comes and she puts her few copper coins in. All the other wealth guys, they’ve been putting out theirs ... and Jesus gets really excited and says, ‘I truly tell you she’s given more that all the rest.’ Because they’ve given out of their abundance, she’s given all she had to live on.
Alex: It’s an amazing passage. And what particularly I find fascinating about that is she knew who her provider was.
Berni: Yes, yes.
Alex: She knew that, even though she was giving away the last amount of money she had, despite that – God was going to take care of her.
Berni: Yes.
Alex: And I think a lot of people, they don’t give generously because they’re fearful that once it’s gone it’s gone. And it’s because they don’t understand that God loves them, He’s a generous father who wants to provide and look after us. And when you live like that, you are really allowing the supernatural to occur. You’re allowing God to provide.
Berni: I remember when I made the decision to finally begin with tithing. I’ve never had wants since then. I’ve never been without since then. Because at that point I’d been through some tragedy in my life and I was really financially badly off. Despite my income. And God just led me out of that. The supernatural dynamic ...
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: Took over.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: I’m not saying we give in order to be blessed.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: But God is a god who blesses obedience.
Alex: Absolutely, exactly. In fact, that was the word that came to my mind as you were speaking. Obedience is critical. And I think it’s a word we don’t probably use enough these days in Christian circles.
Berni: It’s not very popular. It’s not ... that’s not trendy these days.
Alex: No and some people I think associate it with legalism. But it’s not legalism at all; it’s actually about honouring God by living by His principles and His way. And it also works.
Berni: Odd huh?
Alex: I mean that’s the funny thing. I mean ... thing about stewardship. One of the reasons I say to people why you should become a good steward, OK, yes glorifying God is first and foremost, but it works.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: It works.
Berni: It does. Good place to finish mate. Thanks for that. We’re going to do this one more time tomorrow, huh?
Alex: Fantastic.
Berni: Powerful stuff, thanks for that Alex.
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Retirement, now there’s an interesting subject. It’s not a concept you find anywhere in the Bible, so should we be saving for our retirements or does God call us to do something quite different with our money? It’s not an easy one, is it?
Berni: Alex, welcome.
Alex: Hi Berni, great to be with you.
Berni: Hey mate, I said before money's not in the Bible. I often joke with people who are at retirement age and say, “Well if it’s not in the Bible it must be a sin!” Well what’s your take on retirement?
Alex: Look, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with retirement in the sense of stopping paid work. However, the Bible is silent on the topic. There’s one obscure reference in Numbers where God is giving instructions to Moses to tell the Levis to stop working at aged 50. That’s the only reference you’ll find. Apart from that ...
Berni: Mind you, Moses starts his ministry at age 80.
Alex: Exactly.
Berni: Right?
Alex: Well my view is very simple. Each of us has a calling; we have an assignment that God wants us to do. And that calling does not stop the moment you reach, say, the magical age of 65 or whatever the retirement age is in your country. To me retirement really it’s not a biblical concept and the problem is most modern culture pushes this idea that you enter this period of leisure.
Berni: Yes.
Alex: Whereas I think in what I’ve seen, both as a financial planner and also from a Christian perspective, is firstly the longer you work the longer you’ll live. It’s actually much healthier to work.
Berni: You’re just obsessed around that, right?
Alex: Absolutely. And in fact the scary stat is that most men die within five years of retirement. So retire later and you’ll live longer basically. But it’s a statistical fact and I think the reason why is you’re kind of telling your body that you’re shutting down.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: That’s it. But that shouldn’t happen at all. As I say as a Christian you’ve got a calling, you’ve got an assignment that doesn’t end at an age. Now that doesn’t mean you have to do paid work till the day you drop.
Berni: Right.
Alex: And it may well be that we all have different circumstances. So we don’t need to necessarily work. But it’s about using the second half of your life and fulfilling the purposes for which God has called you.
Berni: So, should Christians retire is somewhat of a moot question as far as you’re concerned?
Alex: Exactly right, yeah.
Berni: OK, we’ve got an aging population. What are some of the challenges that we’re going to face as a society with more people getting older?
Alex: It’s putting enormous pressure on governments around the world and on their budgets, if you like.
Particularly, most countries unfortunately over the last 50 years have racked up enormous debts so now they’ve got a massive headwind. The headwind is that people are getting older, so there’s less tax payers because they’re no longer in the workforce. So the government’s got to fund it. And of course they’ve got to pay back the debts that they’ve already accumulated. So there’s enormous pressure.
The other thing is we’re all living longer. We now live 26 years longer than what we did 100 years ago. So if you think about it: retirement’s really sort of a fairly modern day concept. 100 years ago most people would have worked till they dropped.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: But now, you know, it’s now seen as this divine right. That you have this period of leisure. And I always take the view you should be enjoying life as you go along not just from 65 onwards. But not only that, of course we’re meant to be using our life to fulfil our calling, whatever that is right to the very end.
Berni: One of the things I’ve noticed, and please I don’t want any retiree to take offence here. But one of the things I’ve noticed sometimes, particularly among some men, is that when they retire their view and their outlook become a lot narrower that it was when they were working. Am I missing the point here, or ...?
Alex: No, you’re very accurate. Not only that, I’ve found it does all sorts of terrible things. Firstly, many people are lonely, OK. They say 80% of a man’s social life is through work. And so when you retire, essentially your social life drops by 80%.
The second thing is I find people worry about money. Previously you had a job, you had income coming in. The moment you cease work you’ve then got to fund yourself in some way. And so people start worrying about money.
And they can become very inward. When people are in the workforce they tend to be more engaged, more interesting, lots of things going on. And busy. And I think that’s the way we’re meant to be: not too busy, but you know we’re meant to be doing things.
Berni: Active.
Alex: Active, yeah.
Berni: Engaged.
Alex: And that doesn’t happen when you retire. And many people, as I say, they become lonely and what I’ve witnessed: I’ve had many clients who had plenty of money and could retire but they actually ... six months later they were back in the workforce.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: Bored out of their brain. So I think it comes back to the point that we have a purpose. God himself worked and He rested on the seventh day. So we’re the same. We should be working and occasionally we rest so ...
Berni: Even, even Adam tilled the land in the garden. He wasn’t sitting on his backside having a holiday on a beach with a Pina Colada. Right? He was working too. I mean find ... I love what I do. I’m 57 years young. One day I guess I won’t be doing this. One day, God will move me on, bring someone younger, whatever! But my calling is to preach the gospel, right.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: I can’t help myself. As long as I draw breath ...
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: I want to be sharing the good news of Jesus with someone. Even though it may not be ...
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: In the way that I’m doing it right now.
Alex: Yeah, well in fact there’s a psalm that you would love. I think it’s Psalm 71 but I wouldn’t quote me on that necessarily, but ... and then as it says:
Even when I’m old and grey, may I preach your word to the future generations.
That’s paraphrasing it. But essentially it’s saying, you know, no matter what age you are, keep passing the gospel on to future generations. Which is obviously something you’re passionate about.
Berni: Amen. OK, so how does this move, this transition from paid work to maybe non-paid work, how does that change your financial management planning?
Alex: Yeah, look, I think for every person this is going to be quite different. So for some people, in terms of the finances, your finances obviously potentially dictate what you’re able to do. For some people they may be able to go to unpaid work and work, you know, for the local church or some sort of ministry or so forth. For others it may well mean you change career. Nothing wrong with that. These days that’s becoming more common; you could have three or four careers in your lifetime.
Berni: Some of these young people have three or four careers by the time they’re 30 mate.
Alex: 30, yeah. I did. Also you might transition to your own business.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: Or you may transition into some sort of ministry or to part-time. Maybe you love what you do and you don’t want to cease. Why cease? But you lose a bit of energy so perhaps you just go from full-time to part-time. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong on this. But I do think it needs to be planned.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: And actually thought through carefully.
Berni: One of my neighbours was quite senior with an international airline and retired. It was appropriate, he was a pilot, but involved in other things, safety. He now works as a consultant to multiple airlines around the world. You know, a couple of days a week, two or three days a week he’s off to here or off to there. It seems to be a lovely way of transitioning when you’re at that age you don’t want to be working in the corporate world, you know 70 hours a week any more.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: Yeah, totally.
Alex: But also you’ve still got a lot of value to add.
Berni: Totally.
Alex: Now while you’re still drawing breath you’ve got value to add to the world.
Berni: Particularly with your age and your experience and your knowledge.
Alex: Even more so.
Berni: More so, yeah.
Alex: Then you’ve got to pass that wisdom on.
Berni: OK so what about finances? What happens?
Alex: Well I believe that Christians should still aim to be what I call financially independent. Now you have to be very careful with these words because independence is one of the things that as human beings we’ve tried to fight against God if you like and be independent from God. And that’s sinful, that’s ... you know that’s man ...
Berni: Pride.
Alex: Pride, yeah. So that’s wrong but when I talk about the words financially independent what I ... because I’m trying to throw away the word retirement and what that means to people. But I still believe you need to have sufficient finances to make sure that you’re not a burden on any future generations, on the government and so forth, as best you possibly can.
So Christians should use their money, try and build up so that perhaps you own your own home. And then you have enough money left over so that you can fund yourself. So it’s not about hoarding money away and building up vast wealth. But having just enough so that you can get yourself through without being a burden on others.
Berni: Of course that’s different in different cultures and different countries. In Western culture we throw old people away, right?
Alex: That’s terrible, terrible.
Berni: We ultimately stick them in nursing homes. Whereas in a lot of Asian cultures, middle eastern cultures, African cultures, old people become part of the family and they’re looked after in the family. And indeed they have a role in bringing up the children and helping boys to become men.
Alex: Yeah and it should be that way. I actually think that some of those cultures ...
Berni: Get it right.
Alex: And they have a lot to teach us ...
Berni: Absolutely.
Alex: In my experience.
Berni: Absolutely. Look, it’s exciting stuff. Retirement’s not an easy one for many people. What do you say to someone who’s working hard and knows they’re getting to the end of their working life and they simply don’t have the resources?
Alex: Well I say try and discard the word retirement from your psyche. Because it’s putting pressure on you and making you feel uncomfortable about where you’re at. So instead try and replace it with how you’re going to use the second half of your life for God and for glorifying him. And thinking, well OK, if that’s what it’s going to look like, how do I transition to that? And that may well mean if you don’t have those resources that you know, that you keep working. But in a different role.
Berni: And God is an amazing provider.
Alex: Amen.
Berni: Amen. Great stuff. Thanks for that Alex.
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So, the God and money thing. Hasn’t that little combination caused a lot of confusion over the years? And a lot of people struggle to understand where does savings, where does the idea of investment fit into God’s plan? Or should we just give it all away? See, that’s where the confusion comes in.
Berni: Alex, great to have you on the program today.
Alex: Great to be back Berni.
Berni: Hey mate, is there a difference between investing from a secular perspective and a biblical perspective?
Alex: Absolutely. Look, I think there are just two key differences here. One is the purpose behind it and the second is the principles by which you invest.
So what I really mean by that ... well with purpose ... you and I both have a common friend who’s a wealthy individual who’s used his money to fund a film studio. And that film studio is designed to be used to promote Christian media around the world and to train people up and create the next generation of Christians in the media.
But he’s also done another thing, he’s bought a coffee shop where he’s used that coffee shop to bring women out of the sex trade and get them out of prostitution into a normal job and a normal lifestyle.
So the important thing I’m trying to draw out of that is his wealth has a purpose. Now that’s at the extreme end because that’s someone who, you know, has a lot of money. But I met an amazing pastor, probably three years ago, and she had given away four cars. She was not affluent in any way. Probably lived mostly I suspect month to month but she had given away four cars to help people in her church, single mothers in many cases.
So wealth in the Christian world is not a bad thing. We often have painted wealth as a bad thing, a bit dirty, a bit negative. But wealth when it’s channelled to the right purpose can be really powerful. It can be ... you know, it can really change other people’s lives. Lift people out of poverty, advance the gospel, there are so many things you can do with wealth.
Berni: Other than hoarding it.
Alex: So yeah, that’s a very good point. Because there’s a distinction between saving and hoarding. Saving is just setting money aside for a future goal and a future purpose.
Hoarding usually means there’s no specific purpose for it. It’s money that just accumulates over time for no good reason. And usually it’s a sign of a problem, like, as I say it could be a problem like, you know, fear that you’re going to run out of money one day.
So hoarding and saving are actually quite different. Saving is a biblical principle.
Berni: OK.
Alex: In fact, if when we ... if you read Proverbs 6 it talks about the example of the ant. How the ant saves and stores away for the future. And we as Christians should do the same thing. We need to store. I mean, the Bible talks about storing up treasure in heaven but we’re also to set money aside for the future to allow for the fact that circumstances change.
Berni: OK, so the first thing was the difference between secular and biblical investing was having a purpose. What’s the second thing?
Alex: The second thing is the principles and the principles by which you invest. So the way the secular world tends to ... it’s all about kind of getting rich as quick as possible. Whereas the Bible uses things like patience. We need to be patient and invest for the longer term.
We also need to do thorough research. We’re living in a society now where people don’t want to take responsibility any more for their actions. So often when ... they’ll buy an investment either through an adviser or just through a product provider. They’ll then blame someone when that investment goes bad. On one hand you can sort of partly understand why.
But the thing from a biblical perspective ... if we need to actually do our due diligence we need to ... you know the Bible talks about things like being diligent. I mean there’s many passages that speak to this. But we also need to plan things, we need to research things to make sure that what we’re putting God’s money into is likely to be a viable investment and it’s actually likely to achieve the goal for which it set out.
Berni: Now I know there’s someone listening right now who’s a Christian who says, ‘Hang on a minute, what’s this guy talking about? The Bible doesn’t talk about accumulating wealth. That’s wrong, you should actually ... to be a good Christian you should be poor.’
Alex: It’s a ...
Berni: If you want to be poor go into ministry. But OK, go on.
Alex: Look I think that’s really a false teaching that’s being going around for a very long, long time. And it’s almost a counter response to the other teaching that goes around which is that God wants you to be rich. And the kind of health and wealth gospel.
And so my view sits square in the middle of that and that’s what I call, you know, the concept of stewardship. And we go ... if we look at the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 it speaks to the fact that the workers were all given different amounts of resources and they had to get a return on it.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: In fact, depending on which version of the Bible you read, in one it’s called the parable of the gold bags and the one I actually like, it’s called the parable of the loaned money.
And the reason why I like that is it’s a really good way of thinking about it. The money that we have is on loan from God. And we have to get a return on that money. Now that return is not necessarily a percentage return, it’s an eternal return. So whatever money you’ve got, you’ve got to use that money to get an eternal return on investment if you like. Now that could be helping the poor, it could be advancing the gospel, it could be all sorts of different things to different people.
And God, I think, puts things on your heart that you feel particularly passionate about using the money for. But either way it has to have a purpose and then we need of course to invest according to the biblical principles.
Berni: OK, investing out there though can be a dirty business. I mean, there are organisations ... I mean you go and buy shares or you buy products in a fund and there are a whole bunch of ethical issues about what they invest in and ... How do you deal with that?
Alex: Look, I think it’s tough and this is why the research side of things is so important. And as I say, this is where Christians have to take responsibility. They actually have to do something. In fact, there’s a passage in Proverbs 18 which talks about due diligence. It says:
One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.
So we need to actually ... we can’t be slackers. We actually have to do thorough research and be diligent. To make sure that what we’re investing in is something that doesn’t harm people, it doesn’t harm animals, it doesn’t harm the environment, and all those sorts of things.
Now some things are very black and white. So some things are really easy, you know. Christians shouldn’t be buying cigarette companies or casinos. Those sorts of things are very simple. But some things are a bit greyer. So if you took, like, an alcohol company. Now most Christians drink. Jesus turned water into wine. So most people actually think, you know, a liquor company, maybe it’s a bit grey because we know also liquor can lead to alcoholism and all sorts of other things.
So these things are grey and I think you really need to seek God and say, ‘God, is this an investment that I can comfortably own?’ You also have to look at it more deeply than that. So it could be things like; What are the practices of the company? Do they treat their staff properly? Do they pay their staff properly? There are many things that you need to research to make sure that that investment lines up with biblical values.
Berni: When it comes to investing, where do you start? Someone’s visiting and they go, "OK, I do want to invest, I’ve got some money. I have a purpose for the future. I want to invest. How do I start?"
Alex: Yeap! Well the first thing you need to do is save. OK?
Berni: Oh damn! Really?
Alex: Because if you don’t save ... then
Berni: Oh dear.
Alex: Then clearly you’re not going to have anything to invest. That’s the first thing. So you need to save. Second thing is start on the research process to actually work out what are the sorts of investments that you might be considering. And part of that is understanding risk. All investments have some level of risk attached to them. OK.
So I call it the sleep at night test. How will you sleep at night knowing how that money’s invested? And one of the ways to deal with risk, and this is actually something that modern day financial advisers talk about. But it’s actually straight out of the Bible, in fact it’s out of Ecclesiastes. It says this, it says:
Invest in seven ventures, yes in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.
That’s Ecclesiastes.
Berni: Wow, spreading risk.
Alex: Yeah, diversification. So that’s what financial planners will tell you today but it’s actually straight out of the Bible. We need to diversify. And when we look at the world today that’s, you know, increasingly uncertain. I don’t like using that expression because I think things are always uncertain in one sense because you ... no one knows the future.
But when we look at the things going on around the world today you do need to diversify. There is risk in many nations and so that biblical principle of spreading your money, not having all your eggs in one basket, makes very good sense.
Berni: Alex, thanks for that. Some stuff there to think about. wealthwithpurpose.com is your website?
Alex: That’s right.
Berni: I really encourage you to go and have a look at it. It’s ... Alex is in the business of helping people to deal with their finances in a biblical way. So I really appreciate some of the wisdom you’ve shared with us today.
Alex: Thanks Berni, my pleasure.
Berni: Again some amazing insights from Alex, thanks for that.
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In business they say that cash is king. Forget profit, if you don’t keep an eye on the cash flow, you could be out of business in very quick order. Well, as it turns out, it’s not a lot different in our personal finances. Way too many people let their hard earned cash just slip through their fingers.
Berni: Alex, great to have you on the program again this week.
Alex: Thanks for having me back, Berni.
Berni: Hey, you run an organisation called ‘Wealth with Purpose’ which is about what?
Alex: Well, it’s about helping people manage their money wisely. And in particular, manage their money according to biblical principles. Because what we know is that the biblical principles – when we adopt them into our day-to-day finances – help you, if you like, live a very financially free life.
Berni: Yeah, that’s ... it’s easy to say, right.
Alex: It is!
Berni: But many of us feel like we have holes in our pockets. What are some of the things that we need to take back in control to manage to flow of cash through our personal finances?
Alex: Yeah, well I’ll start by giving a scripture actually, because this probably will really set the scene ...
Berni: You Christians are always ... quote the Bible.
Alex: I don’t know, fair dinkum. Well this one’s a great one from Luke Chapter 14 it says this, it says:
Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?
Now that’s very, very sensible advice. And really what it’s saying is, you need to know how much things cost and how much your life actually costs to run. So what I always encourage people to do firstly is to do a budget. And a budget is simply just a tool and what it does is it shows you how much money is coming in to your house. So your wages and so forth. Versus how much money is going out. And hopefully that’s a surplus.
Berni: Yeah
Alex: Because if you’re in deficit then clearly, you know, you’re starting to rack up debt and so forth and getting yourselves into financial difficulty. So the first thing is having that budget and learning and becoming aware of where your money is, where you’re spending it, what you’re spending it on, whether you’re spending too much in some areas, too little in other areas. And really just thinking it through and making a plan. So that’s the first thing.
Berni: It’s quite a ... It’s interesting I was sitting with someone recently and we were doing a bit of a budget for them and we just looked at how much money they spent on coffee and lunches, right. Just coffee and lunches, and when we added it up for the week they were appalled with how much money was just running through their fingers.
Alex: It’s amazing. I’ve done it for myself and I was absolutely staggered. We’re talking you know a four figure sum over the course of a year. It was just staggering how much money goes in those sort of things. And that’s one of the things that budgeting helps you do because it brings to light ...
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: Things and you think, "Oh, really, surely there’s a better way of doing that?"
Berni: And that’s not how I want to spend my money.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: If you don’t know, well you’re just going to keep doing it.
Alex: Yeah, and of course it’s eating into your future when you’re spending money on things you shouldn’t.
Berni: So first thing is to do a budget. What comes next?
Alex: Secondly, I say to people, is to try and automate your finances, OK. And by that I really mean saying, "Well, we know how much money is coming in each month and we want to then direct it according to a specific purpose." So as Christians we say we want to live generously with the money, OK. So the money, we acknowledge it’s not ours, we’re called to be stewards. So how do we live generously with it? So I say to people, with your budget, try and allocate the first 10% to God as a way of honouring God and giving glory to Him. Now, that is not the limit, it’s just, you know, a recommended starting point. I don’t believe in having a legalistic rule around these sort of things.
Berni: Good on you.
Alex: The second ...
Berni: Otherwise I’d beat you out of the chair. Hey, listen. James L Kraft, the guy that started the Kraft food empire once said this, he said, "I don’t believe in tithing but I guess it’s not a bad place to start."
Alex: When you reflect on Jesus’ teaching, I think Jesus throughout the New Testament is really calling us to a higher standard in everything. In marriage, you know in the Old Testament you could send your wife away with a certificate of divorce but in the New Testament it’s a very different picture. It’s, you know, the only reason grounds for divorce is marital unfaithfulness.
And so I think it’s the same principle for our money. Jesus is actually calling us to a higher standard. And so I don’t think that standard is capped at 10%.
Berni: No, we’re not just tipping God. Mind you in the US you’ve got to tip 15 to 20% now, right. It’s not just tipping God, right?
Alex: Well, funnily enough when you talk about tithing in the Old Testament people think it was only 10%, a lot of people today. It was actually 23% because there were three tithes that we know about. Some scholars I’ve heard argue think there were even more than that. But we know there were three totalling over 23%. And I don’t think there’s too many Christians today giving 10% let alone 23%.
Berni: Sorry, I interrupted you.
Alex: Yeah, so as I said automating your finances I think is the thing. So we want to send the money off in different directions according to a set purpose. So first there’s giving to God.
The second thing is you need to save for the future, OK. Now that could be for your kids’ expenses, for their schooling, it could be saving for the say when you cease work. And that day comes to all of us be it, you know, ill health or redundancy and so forth.
And then you leave the remaining portion for your everyday expenses. Now as you get pay increases and your circumstances change then you may want to give more, you may want to save more, and ideally your living expenses on a day-to-day basis actually reduce as a percentage of your spending.
Berni: What about physically managing accounts? Should a couple have separate accounts, same accounts, how many bank accounts should we have, what do you advise people?
Alex: Yeah, well that’s a great question. To deal with the couple issue first and foremost. I believe couples should have joint accounts in most circumstances, not all but in most. Simply because it’s transparency and it’s sort of acknowledging that the money is not either his or hers but it’s ours for stewarding for God. So having joint accounts I think is very important.
There are some exceptions: if someone’s come from, say it’s a second marriage and the first marriage broke down due to distrust and unfaithfulness and all those sort of things. Some people can be, you know, very affected by those sort of things. And therefore you need to rebuild the trust before you do that. So I think there are circumstances where you need to be, you know, about reasonable about it.
The other thing, though, is how many accounts should you have? I believe in what I call the ‘kiss’ theory: keep it simple silly. OK and by keeping it ...
Berni: In the army we used to call it keep it simple stupid.
Alex: So keep it simple, so I would suggest that you have no more than two to three accounts. One account should be your emergency fund, where you put money aside and I say to people they should try and put six months’ worth of living expenses.
Berni: Ah.
Alex: Now for a lot of people, that sounds like a lot.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: But the stats show that in many countries most people are broke within four to six weeks of losing their job because they don’t have money saved. And that puts enormous pressure on people and on relationships. So six months’ worth of living expenses in a bank account. That’s your first account.
The second one, your everyday account, OK. So your everyday account is for, you know, your rent, your mortgage and day-to-day spending.
And then the last account can be your combination of your giving to God account or your long term planning account. So long term saving for the future, for as I say your kids’ education and so forth. So that’s a simple way to do it. But no more than really two to three. But this is not about complicating it and for some people depending on how well they manage it, they may only need one account. For others, where they’re not so good at it, they need to put it out of sight out of mind and have it separate and isolated if you like so they don’t spend it.
Berni: I reckon it depends on how well you manage it. I reckon a lot of people just simply don’t manage it.
Alex: I would say probably, yes. In my experience probably 80%, 90% of people struggle.
Berni: So there’s a very clear message that I’m getting from what you’ve been saying is that we need to get on the front foot, we need to get proactive about ... If we’re serious, if I say I believe in Jesus. If I say that Jesus Christ is my Lord, that God comes first, then one of the things we need to get serious about is the purpose of our wealth. To get serious about that we really need to know what’s happening with the money.
Alex: Exactly right. I mean there’s no way you can have an eternal perspective of your money if you don’t know where your money’s going.
Berni: No.
Alex: It’s just impossible. So you know budget a very simple tool to actually make you aware and to then help you to ask honest questions. Am I honouring God with my money?
Berni: Yeah, that’s a tough question, hey?
Alex: It is, but it’s important.
Berni: Well let me ask you. You’re listening to this money expert here talk away, Alex Cook. Are you honouring God with your money? Now there’s something to think about and there’s something to pray about, hey?
Alex: Absolutely.
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Which one of us doesn’t know that unsettling feeling of getting the credit card bill in January after that Christmas shopping binge? Way too many people are spending tomorrow’s financial blessings today, living beyond their means and that’s ruining many a life.
Alex: Thanks for having me, Berni.
Berni: Mate, we’ve talked a bit about debt so far. But why, in a nutshell, is debt becoming such a bit problem in our society?
Alex: Well, really over the last 50 years, debt has exploded across the world. You know, most societies used to be nations of savers and now are nations of spenders. Certainly in the country we’re in it’s gone from people saving 16% of their income to, prior to the financial crisis, actually went negative.
Berni: OK.
Alex: Down to -3%.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: So we’ve just totally shifted on it. And I think it’s because money and getting in debt has just become so easy.
Berni: It is, isn’t it?
Alex: Yes, I mean you can go to the bank, get a credit card. Apart from stating what your income is, they’ll give you a credit card. You know, pretty much on the spot.
Berni: I remember when I bought my first house as a young man, it was really hard to get a loan for a house.
Alex: Yes.
Berni: Whereas now, money is so readily available.
Alex: Yeah, I mean the scary thing I thought, prior to the financial crisis, is banks who’d actually lend people 100% of a home loan. In fact, one bank would lend 105% so that then you’re the government duties and things as well. It was just mind boggling.
Berni: And so debt’s become normalised, hasn’t it?
Alex: Yes.
Berni: The notion that we spend our whole lives in debt is kind of just, "Well, that’s the way it is."
Alex: Yes, exactly.
Berni: What’s the Bible say about debt?
Alex: Haha, well the Bible says quite a bit on debt. And it’s basically warning messages. So one of the passages talks about the fact that debt can lead to slavery. That to me is the one that always really hits me. And that is when you take on debt you run the risk of becoming enslaved to a financial institution.
And one of the things I see, particularly in this country, is some people spend 50% of their income in mortgage repayments. Now that to me is modern day slavery. Because when you allow for taxes and all the other expenses in life, and as Christians you know we’re called to be generous, but when you’ve got that much debt you’re essentially enslaved.
Berni: So let’s talk about that. That means you’ve got to travel further, commute further, work further, work longer, get the bigger job that pays the extra money so that you can service the debt.
Alex: Exactly right. Debt steals from your future.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: Because ultimately you have to pay it back and you’re taking ... essentially spending future income. That’s the major problem with it.
Berni: But some people don’t even know they’re doing it because these days with credit cards and swipe and swipe that and whatever, a lot of people don’t even know that it’s happening until the statement comes – if they happen to open the statement when it comes!
Alex: Yeah, no, you’re exactly right, and it’s frightening. I mean the fantastic expression I heard from a Christian author once and that is that: ‘Debt in western culture particularly has become normal, harmless and necessary.'
Now you think about each of those. It’s normal because everyone does it. People think it’s harmless until of course they get into trouble, so that may take years before that actually occurs. And that it’s necessary so the classic one I have when I’m talking to people is they tell me, ‘If I don’t have debt I’ll never own a home, I’ll never have this, I’ll never have that unless I have debt.’ And so that’s become the pervasive logic. But the Bible of course says that’s not true at all. In fact, I believe there are considerable alternatives to debt.
Berni: Well, OK. Young couple gets married, wants to buy a house. How are they going to do it without debt?
Alex: Well, I think the first thing is you’re obviously going to save. And we’re going to go back to becoming a nation of savers. But there’s a fantastic passage in Deuteronomy which I’ll read you, from Deuteronomy 28 because I think it really paints a different perspective on money and where it comes from. It says this, it says:
The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none.
Now, there’s a couple of things from that. Obviously this was talking to a specific group of people rather than necessarily just us today. But I think the principle here is what’s important. And that is that ultimately God is the provider and if God wants you to have something, He can make it happen very, very easily. It’s not difficult.
And God, I believe, if that we ... you know, we’re created to work, we’re not meant to, you know, just sit around doing nothing. We’re created to work and God ...
Berni: That’s the mistake I’m making!
Alex: And God can bless the work of your hands, what you’re doing, to provide for you. And that’s, you know ... the Bible says God gives us the ability to gain wealth. And so I believe you don’t necessarily need debt at all. In fact, by my own example I’ve never had a mortgage.
Berni: OK.
Alex: And I’ve bought my first place in cash.
Berni: OK.
Alex: Now most people say, ‘How, that’s impossible.’ Now it’s very possible by simply saving and following biblical principles working hard and setting money aside.
Berni: And I guess choosing where you buy. I guess ...
Alex: True.
Berni: You wouldn’t be able to do that in the middle of New York on 5th Avenue.
Alex: No, exactly right. And look, even in Australia and Melbourne, most countries it’s become harder. But certainly it’s the principle. And I’m not saying that debt is sinful, by the way.
Berni: OK, that was going to be my next question.
Alex: Yeah, no, debt is not sinful. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have debt at all. Merely saying that you are very cautious, that you have an intent to pay it back very quickly. Because one of the things the Bible says is the wicked don’t repay. So there’s actually a moral burden on us to actually pay back the debts we take. And we should be ... have that intention of paying it back.
Berni: Because now you can just get an interest only loan, right. And kind of almost never pay it back.
Alex: Oh, exactly right. And the thing in the United States prior to their big crisis which was a housing crisis that sort of triggered it. They have what they call jingle mail, that is if you default on your home loan you just send the keys back. Whereas in many other countries they’re what we call full recourse loans which means they come for the house, the car, and everything else you’ve got to pay back the debt.
Berni: Right.
Alex: So ... but as I said, the biblical principle is we must repay. We have a moral responsibility if we borrow from someone we have to pay them back, alright.
Berni: What are the dangers you see in debt? I’m thinking of just an average couple who just have a little kid and they want to buy their first little home, nothing ostentatious, nothing ... what are the dangers around debt that we need to be aware of?
Alex: Well, the danger of course is that you entrap yourself into a set of circumstances that you can’t get out of. You know, you’ve got the mortgage. One of you loses your job and then all of a sudden it’s a big struggle. Puts enormous stress and pressure on the marriage.
So in terms of the practical way to manage that because obviously most couples want to borrow money and actually go out and buy something. So I say to them, ‘Look, make sure you borrow 20 to 30% less than what the bank will give you.’ Because the bank’s strategy is to actually get you into debt. They just want to make sure you can at least service it and pay it back. They want you to take on as much debt as possible. So the first thing is take on 20 to 30% less than what they offer.
The second thing is that make sure that your mortgage repayments are no more than 30% of your disposable income. And ideally for couples, try and borrow on the basis that you can service it with just one income. Because there’s a very good chance that after you get married all of a sudden kids come along and then you’ve got a new set of pressures and things like that and things that are demanding from your financial resources.
So there are a couple of little things that people can do. But the main thing is – don’t have an attitude where you need to buy the big house straight away and ... because many people they don’t want to start with a little two-bedroom unit, they want to go to the house and they take on too much debt too soon.
Berni: OK, very quickly. Simple strategies for getting out of debt.
Alex: Well first thing is make a list of all your debts.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: OK. Once you’ve made a list put them in order of highest interest rate debt to the lowest. Because you want to pay off the highest rate debts first. I also say to choose the smallest debts, so the smallest, high interest debts which are most likely to be say credit cards. The reason why you want to choose the smaller one first is because you want to have a sense of achievement ...
Berni: Yes.
Alex: That you’re paying those off. So you’ve got your order, you know which ones you want to pay off first. Then look at your budget and say how much extra can we pay against our debts to actually pay it off quicker. So rather than just servicing it and paying the minimum actually pay off extra to get your debt down as quick as possible.
The other thing is potentially to assess some of your assets and say, ‘Do we really need this asset, is this something that we could sell in order to reduce our debt?’ So maybe you’ve got two cars and you go to one. Or your house is ... you don’t need it, it’s too big, you may ... or maybe you’re honest with yourself and you say, ‘Well, we over extended ourselves so maybe we should just downsize.’ All those sort of things to consider to get out of debt as quick as possible.
Berni: Some really good stuff there. We might continue this discussion on next week, what do you reckon?
Alex: Fantastic, look forward to it.
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If ever there were a tricky combination – it’d have to be combination of marriage and money. Anyone who’s married knows exactly what I’m talking about, perhaps, hey? It kind of makes a lot of sense for husband and wife to get on the same page when it comes to the often difficult area of their finances.
Berni: Alex, great to have you on the program again today.
Alex: Thanks for having me, Berni.
Berni: Mate, why do so many people, in fact so many couples, struggle with money?
Alex: Well I think when it comes to couples we all come into marriage with very different things. We come in with different upbringings, different cultures in some cases, different personalities, gender differences. There’s all these sorts of things about us that are different.
And also you put these two people together, and as Christians we call it two becoming one, and sometimes that can cause quite, you know, chaotic behaviour. But if we address, say, the issue of upbringing.
OK, so one partner may come from a family where money was tough, it was always hard. And that person’s likely to be fairly security conscious because they always struggled and they’re always looking for a way of sort of protecting themselves so that they don’t find themselves in the same situation that they had when they were growing up.
Other people, on the other hand, may have grown up in a family whereby they were big spenders. Money was easy, it was all care-free and they just spent everything. So when you put those kind of two people together, there can be immediate conflict. Because there’s a conflict then over perceived needs versus wants, and one could see ... and that could be very, very different as to what those needs and wants are.
Berni: Yeah, it’s not easy. Why are Christians called to manage their money differently from everyone else?
Alex: Yeah, I think from a Christian perspective we need to look at it as being God’s stewards. So stewardship is really the idea that we are managing something on behalf of somebody else. So as a Christian you’re managing the resources on behalf of God.
In fact, I call it the three ‘T’s. You’ve got to manage time, talent and treasure. In the context of what we’re talking about now, we’re talking about money. So how do you manage the treasure that God’s blessed you with? So the Christian view, then, with money is as I was saying, "OK if it’s God’s money, what are going to do to honour God with that money? How are we going to glorify him, how are we going to use this money in a way that advances His kingdom, His purposes?" Because that’s ultimately why we’re here. We’re here, you know, we get saved, we get saved for a reason so that we can actually then extend His kingdom here on earth.
Berni: Let’s bring that into marriage. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they decide to get married, right. Often they come into a marriage these days with quite disparate financial situations and one of the things that’s becoming very popular round the world now is pre-nuptials, right.
Alex: Yes.
Berni: This idea that, ‘Well this is my money and if something happens to our marriage then these are the rules.’ What’s your take? From a biblical perspective of two becoming one ...
Alex: Yes.
Berni: Husband and wife. What’s your take on this whole prenuptial thing?
Alex: Well, look I think pre-nuptials - it’s built from the idea that it may fail one day. And I think as a Chris ... that’s a very flawed way of thinking. Because if you go into marriage thinking it might fail, then it probably will. I actually think you’ve got to actually start from the perspective that we will never get divorced and that’s got to be your attitude when you go into it. And therefore you’re much more on the right page.
From the point of view of two becoming one, so how is a couple ... what does that really mean when it comes to money? Well I think the first thing is you need to have a common vision. Because often what happens is we all have different interests, different passions and pursuits and we often then wander off as couples in different directions. But I think as a Christian you need to actually bring that back in. So what is the common vision?
We’ve named our organisation ‘Wealth with Purpose’ for this reason. Because as a couple your wealth should have a purpose. The other thing is our society now teaches us that we have to be independent. And that’s a very dangerous way of thinking. As a couple you need to be interdependent on each other and dependent on God for your provision. Because if you’re just running off in your own direction being independent, inevitably you’re going to clash. And it then becomes his and her money. Whereas in fact it’s not even his or her money, it’s not even our money, it’s actually God’s money. So it really changes the way you think about it.
And I think also we should have shared goals, shared vision, and shared responsibility and, you know, contributing. And it may not necessarily be financially contributing but actually just contributing with what you’re doing with those resources.
Berni: What are some of the real financial danger zones that couples fall into, they need to avoid?
Alex: Probably the most common one these days is excessive debt. Because when you get into excessive debt it puts enormous pressure on the marriage. Particularly, let’s say one or both partners are out of work. All of a sudden those mortgage payments become monumental. And that puts enormous stress on a marriage. So having excessive debt is a very common one.
And another one is hiding money. You’d be amazed how many couples I’ve witnessed where they’re actually hiding money from each other.
Berni: Really?
Alex: Yes, it could be hiding bonuses, it could be hiding credit card debt – there’s a big one – you know, they’ve racked up ... spent money on the credit card. I remember having one client who was worth an enormous amount of money and the wife had racked up $25,000 on the credit card and the husband had no idea. And he ... and they were very, once again very different personalities. He was the saver; she was the spender. And boy was there a clash coming when he found out. So that’s, you know, a very, very common thing.
There’s all sorts of areas. You know, it could be our insecurities, you know as we’re human beings we’re all broken in our own little ways and our insecurities can lead to bad financial habits. And that obviously can affect our marriage as well. But I think probably the biggest one is the difference in perception between needs and wants.
Berni: I’ll pick up on something you just said there. The idea of it being God’s money and who you actually trust. I think that the way we behave in terms of spending and saving and indeed hoarding for those who hoard, says a lot about whether we trust God or not.
Alex: Absolutely. I mean my view on this is that many people, they know about God, but they don’t really know God.
Berni: Yes.
Alex: So you can read the Bible and know about God but until you actually spend time with God, in prayer, in worship, in the word, and actually devote to getting to know God. And the example I use is like Barack Obama. OK, I know about him but I don’t really know him.
Berni: Yes.
Alex: Everyone knows about him because they hear about him on TV all the time. But they don’t really know him. And it’s the same sort of concept. To trust God with money you need to really know him. You need to know that he is the provider. That he is in complete control of all events. Because if you don’t really know God’s character and don’t have that relationship with Him, when the storms of life come, and they will come, you’ll find things much, much tougher.
Berni: What sort of strategies can couples use to manage conflict over finances? Because I guess a lot of marriages fall apart over finances. How can they manage this?
Alex: Look I say to adopt a very simple process around this. And the first thing is to identify whatever it is you’re fighting over. And that’s probably the easy part of it. The second thing is to then say, ‘Well what are all the possible solutions?’ And most likely you’re going to come up with quite different things.
And let’s use an example. Let’s say the car. The car’s broken down and it keeps breaking down. So there’s all sorts of solutions. One you could go and buy a brand new car, you can go and buy a second hand car, you can get the one you’ve got fixed, you can do a few different options. Then the next thing to say is, ‘OK, if we’ve got all these options, what is going to be the financial impact on that, how’s it going to affect our overall finances and of course what’s the spiritual impact? Do we feel that God has a view on this?’ Because I think many couples actually leave God out of all their decision making.
Berni: Well exactly. If we don’t see this money as God’s money, then the purpose that we have around our wealth, husband and wife can have totally different purposes.
Alex: Absolutely. And so in my view before all major financial decisions, now it could be buying a house, or even renting a house, buying a car, you know, going to college, all those sorts of things, that you should pray about it and ask God to guide you and to lead you. Because if you don’t, if you leave God out of it, you’re much more likely to make mistakes. It’s not to say you’ll never make a mistake again, but it’s merely to say that you’ve got to include God in your decision making process.
Berni: Mate, we’re almost out of time. Great chatting with you. We might do this again.
Alex: Fantastic, look forward to it.
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You’ve heard that old Chinese curse, I guess, “May you live in interesting times”. Well, these days we certainly are living in interesting times. Very interesting times, especially when it comes to this whole topic of money and finances.
Alex: Thanks for having me, Berni.
Berni: Hey, is it just me or had the world gone crazy? I mean governments seem to be spending so much more money than they have. What’s going on in this world?
Alex: Yeah, look, it is quite amazing. I mean we’ve got a situation, really around the world, where we’ve been living beyond our means for a very long time. Probably 30, 40 years. As a result of that, it’s now sort of coming home to roost. There’s a lot of pressure on societies. Most governments around the world have racked up enormous debts over a very long time. Through running what we call budget deficits. Which simply means there’s more money going out in terms of spending versus money coming in in the form of taxes. And you can only do that for so long before you go broke.
Berni: That’s not rocket science, right? I mean, you and I both know that in our personal budgets.
Alex: Exactly right, it’s not. But I think the problem is governments feel under enormous pressure to deliver on what they’ve promised. And no politician wants to be the bad guy who takes away the cookies, if you like. So many of them have promised all sorts of things and you see these endless debates on TV around issues around healthcare, retirement, and so forth.
And so governments have promised many benefits for the citizens into the future that 100 years ago they either didn’t need to pay, because of demographics: we didn’t live as long 100 years ago. But now we’re living longer the pressure on the economic system is much harder. The number of people in the work who are supporting paying taxes to fund people in retirement, for example, is very, very out of whack and it’s getting harder and harder.
Berni: I mean, US debt is ballooning, right?
Alex: Yeah, I mean their government alone owes $19 trillion and that’s just the federal government. That doesn’t include state local government and doesn’t include the household debt which takes you to $60 trillion and it’s mind-boggling.
Berni: Just to put trillion in perspective, if I were to count from one to a trillion, right, one second at a time would take me almost 32,000 years. Just to put the number trillion ... because trillion doesn’t mean anything to us, right? It’s an unbelievably large number.
Alex: Exactly, although the question I always ask people is how many zeros in a trillion.
Berni: What is it?
Alex: It’s 12 zeros, it’s frightening.
Berni: And so is that spending behaviour translating into our personal psyche as well?
Alex: Absolutely. I think it’s very pervasive now at the household level. Many of us feel under enormous pressure to, you know, to keep up with the Joneses. To have this sort of pressure to have a house, to have a car, to have all these sorts of things is ... it’s endless.
Doesn’t matter really where you live in the world there’s always a pressure to have more. And the media certainly feeds on that through advertising and so forth. So it’s very, very difficult for now for people to try and bring in the biblical perspective and the eternal perspective into their money.
Berni: OK, well let’s talk about the biblical ... because it’s going to take eternity for some of these people to pay off their debt.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: Right. So let’s bring the biblical perspective. What are the ... what does God’s word actually have to say about money, about wealth, about debt. What’s the stuff that strikes you for from God’s word?
Alex: You know, look, well, it’s amazing how much it does say this. More than 2300 verses in the Bible on money, wealth and possessions.
Berni: Wow.
Alex: And it was 15% of Jesus’ teaching. He talked about money more than anything else. Of course there’s good reason for that. And that is because of the impact that it has on our relationship with God. But in terms of day-to-day finances, one of the classic ones is in the Proverbs where it says debt can lead to slavery. It’s a warning message.
In fact, many of the messages in the Bible about money are actually warning messages. So the problem at the moment, when we’re talking about these debts around the world and in the US and indeed in most countries, is you have to pay the debt back.
Berni: Yes.
Alex: And of course you have to service the interest on the debt. And as the debt gets bigger and bigger it gets harder and harder just to pay the interest bill. The most frightening country in the world, I think, is Japan where a third of their government budget is just paying the interest on the debt. And the interest is at 1% or below on the debt.
Berni: Wow.
Alex: So if interest rates went to 3% in Japan, essentially the entire government revenue consumes the government budget. It’s frightening.
Berni: That’s scary. What about at a personal level. What bit of wisdom have you got for someone who’s maybe not that well off? I mean we look at all these big numbers with governments and all these wealthy people who drive flash cars. That’s well and good. But the average person on the street, particularly the average person who’s struggling even to put food on the table. What does God’s word speak into their life about money?
Alex: Well the first thing I think is it speaks very much to your mentality and your perspective. And that is to firstly acknowledge that the money that God has given you, whether it’s a little or whether it’s a lot, is actually God’s money. And when you have that perspective it totally changes the way you think about it.
Berni: How did it change your way? Like, it’s easy to ...
Alex: Say ...
Berni: Say that, right.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: But how do you live that, how do you live this notion that the money, the resources that I have do not belong to me? Because I suspect that very few people live that way.
Alex: I think you’re right, in most cultures. I think for me it started by assessing the way I spent my money and saying does my budget, does it honour God? Am I using the money to fund the things that I really believe in? You see, what you do with your money really actually states what you believe. In fact, once ... someone said to me once that your bank statements are like theological documents because they tell you what you believe.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: How you spend the money from your bank account or your credit card really says a lot about what you truly believe. And so for me the big shift is thinking, ‘Well, OK, if that’s the case I need to actually start using this money to fund what I believe’. And what I believe of course is that Jesus is coming again and I want to share the good news with as many people as possible. So I need to use the money to fund that.
Berni: But OK, let’s say I’m not that flush with money. Let’s say I don’t have that much to spare, right. And now it’s a decision between not just giving towards something that is happening in God’s mission field and my luxury spending, my discretionary spending. But it’s actually going to bite into seriously my lifestyle and how much food I can put on the table and where I can live and ... What do you do with that?
Alex: Yeah, and look I think everyone has to pray and ask God for guidance with what ... the kind of lifestyle he wants. We all live in different parts of the world, in different circumstances. And we actually ... you know, God needs people in poor communities, he needs people in rich communities. But on a personal level I think as Christians we should live what I call simply. That is, we don’t need to live extravagantly. And what we do with our money should have an eternal perspective to it. So if you have a tough decision between giving up something now and having something, you know, in the future. Sometimes we need to give it up now because of the ... the reward will actually be in heaven.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: You’ll be rewarded for what you do with your money. And that’s something ... Not only will you be rewarded but we actually have to give an account.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: We actually have to say, ‘God, this is what I’ve done with the resources you’ve given me.’
Berni: Well that’s the parable, isn’t it? The three servants and the master gave away. Gave one five talents, the other two and the other one talent.
Alex: Yeah.
Berni: And expected a pretty significant, 100% return.
Alex: Return, yeah. Multiplication.
Berni: Yeah a big return, yeah. The guy who did nothing, he was in some serious trouble.
Alex: Yes, and that whole parable I think speaks to a few things. I think one that we’re stewards of what God’s given us. Two is that one day Jesus will return and we have to give an account for what we’ve done. And the third thing of course is that what he’s given us, we’re actually to do something with it.
We have to, I call it investing in eternity. Now that doesn’t mean you’re putting your money in property or the share market or whatever. But whatever you’re doing with your money, you need to invest in eternity. Because one day we’re going to give an account and we’ll of course be rewarded for what we’ve done with the resources that God’s given us.
Berni: The most profound part of that parable for me is that a talent wasn’t a small amount of money. A talent was actually about 15 years’ wages for a labourer. So even the guy who got one talent got 15 years’ wages to invest which is rather a lot. And the guy who got five talents got almost, well, more than a lifetime’s worth of wages to invest. So God has really given us all rather a lot.
Alex: Absolutely. And often we forget that. I think one of the big things is to actually be grateful.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: And to be content with what we’ve got.
Berni: Yeah.
Alex: Which is challenging in this world we live in.
Berni: Contentment is hard when the advertising industry keeps on making you discontent.
Alex: Absolutely.
Berni: Alright, great talking to you. We’ll do this again, hey?
Alex: Absolutely, look forward to it.
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