Right, we are entering into a new series, a finance series: "No Dough, No Bread." I'm excited for a finance series! I don't know if anybody's more excited than I am, except for our guest speaker. He's going to open up our series today, and you know him if you've taken our finance class, "I Was Broke, Now I'm Not." He has impacted lives here at CLC. The class has really helped me, and I know that it's helped everyone who has been in that class.
So, we're going to learn today what it means to be a part of the Kingdom regarding our finances. So, let's give a warm welcome to Joe Sangle!
Thank you, brother. Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone. You can be seated.
Hey, I just want to start before I get started in the message to say a special word of thanks to Pastor Jerry McQuay and his bride, Pastor Chris, or Chris Anne. What do you call her? Pastor Chris Anne or Chris? It's Chris Anne on Facebook, so I just wanted to make sure. I love your heart for the community and for the world. I don't know what possessed you 10 years ago to call me and invite this raving lunatic to come talk, but I'm so grateful.
And to Pastor Brent and Saul and your family, just the anointing of the Lord is on you. I said that in 2019; I saw it. It's obvious. I just wanted to say to this team right up here and the people that sang—now, I moved to South Carolina from Indiana about 25 years ago, and I learned that instead of saying they could sing, if you can really sing, they say they could sing. I can tell you right now, they sang today! They sang that song! Woo! I'm telling you right now, after the first service, I was like, "Lord have mercy! I'm so glad I get to hear that again, and I'm going to watch it online again." That was incredible! Really, it ushered us into the presence of the Lord.
And I did want to say a special thank you to Pastor Carlton for all the planning for this weekend and keeping CLC between the ditches and making wise financial decisions. You all have a treasure in Pastor Carlton. Way to go! Fired up! I gave him a couple tips, and he didn't even need to know them. When we talked in planning for this, he already had it and was ahead of me on it, and I love that. That's awesome!
Today, I'm going to talk about money. Who's fired up about that? Yes! Three people are. It's great! What if I told you I was giving out free samples of money? [Applause]
All right, well, the wisdom is like getting free samples. Okay, it's similar. Now, this morning, I had a magical moment happen. So did you! At 3:00, we somehow magically spawned an extra hour. My clock went back to 2:00. Did your clock do that? Isn't that awesome? That is awesome! An extra hour of sleep! It was amazing!
And I was thinking about it, knowing that I was going to talk about money. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could have a month where you could just have no bills? What would that be like? Like, no bills! Let's just spell it out: no rent, no mortgage, no food bill, no credit card bill, no car payment. I'm talking no student loan payment. I'm talking no bills—just income! How awesome would that be?
And while we're at it, instead of grabbing an extra month of that, how about we could go three months with no bills? What if we could go a year with no bills? Could you make some progress? Well, I don't know exactly how to do that, but if you employ what I teach today, it's going to be almost like that—real close to it.
And today, we're going to talk about this money thing, and I want to talk about changing. Everybody say "change." Change! Change is hard! As they say, the only person that likes change is a baby, right? I mean, changing is difficult; it's against human nature. We learn habits.
And today, I want to talk about changing, and I've got four little things that I want to compare to. I want to talk about changing from struggle to surplus. Who's interested in that type of change? There we go! To change from "owe" to "own." One little difference—a big difference in how you get to live. To move from selfishness to selflessness.
Yeah, and to move from greed. Now, we've never been greedy; we've seen other people be greedy, but it's hard to see it in us, isn't it? Yes! But I'm human. Is anybody human? Is anybody a human here today? Well, if you're a human, you've wrestled with greed. And we're going to move—change from greed to generosity, and we're going to unpack that today.
And I just want to help you change. I know that change is hard, and I've had this with my own financial journey because I grew up in a family of six boys. I'm the youngest of six. I have an identical twin brother. They say he was born seven minutes before me. Now, I was present, but I don't remember it, so I'm the youngest by seven minutes, okay?
And so, I'm the baby of six boys, and money was a scarcity in our household. I grew up just south of Indianapolis, Indiana, in the middle of the cornfields, and money was very scarce. In fact, my mother and father—my dad talks about driving our 1974 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale. Anybody know about those cars? Google that; it will bless you!
1974 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale—it was a land yacht! It floated like this! And my mom and dad had a rule that no one sat up front with them. So, the two parents in front and then six boys crawled in the back. There were no seat belts involved in this, okay? And because my twin and I were the youngest, we got the choice of the amazing accommodations of sitting in the back window or the hump.
Anybody know about the hump in the old cars? Yeah, the hump! So, we get in this car, and my dad says he remembers distinct moments where he would look in that rearview mirror and see six sets of eyeballs staring at him. He would have moments of panic and say, "My Lord, I'm going to be broke forever! How do I even feed these kids?"
And I'm telling you, he had some special moments. Money was scarce, and so I learned nothing about money other than we should probably fight about it because anytime my parents talked about money, it was not done in what I call eloquent tones. They were distressed about it.
And so, I started my money journey really when my twin and I decided to go to college. Now, I didn't know I wanted to go to college, but I had pretty good grades in high school. Mr. Larry Ferris, our guidance counselor—he was the only guidance counselor. There were 55 kids in our whole grade. He was the guidance counselor for 508 years. He was committed to his calling, and he put a free application to Purdue University in my hands.
Well, I could afford free, so I filled it out, and seven days later, I was accepted to the School of Engineering. My twin went to that evil tribal school known as Indiana University. We have to call him "Doctor" now. But anyhow, I went to Purdue, and I had no money. So, I started dating this girl named Sally May.
Oh, you know her? Really? Maybe you know her first cousins: Navient, Federal Direct Loan, Great Lakes Servicing. Am I getting some of them? AES? Some of y'all didn't know about them for the last two and a half years, but recently they reintroduced themselves to you at a higher interest rate.
And I went to college, and I went to this weirdly named office I've never said before or since called the Bursar's Office. Anybody know the Bursar's Office? It's where you pay for college. And I went in there, and listen, I would just sign some documents with my name, and they would let me stay, and they would give me 20 meals a week.
In fact, college was really expensive. It was so expensive, y'all! It cost me $7,000 to go to Purdue for a year! That includes room and board, like the meals and living. Oh, you don't think that's expensive? It seemed expensive back then!
Hey, I'm just going to be a prophet: 20 years from now, today's cost is going to seem cheap. That's a fact! And so, I financed all my college education. My first weekend there, they gave me free stuff if I filled out credit card applications, so I filled them all out. A week later, I had a credit card, and I started swiping.
I should have learned that wisdom from the kids' show that says, "Swiper, no swiping!" Come on, vamos, everybody! Let's go! But I swiped away, and then I graduated college with a degree in mechanical engineering. I bought myself a new car. I even financed the sales tax—105% financing! It's awesome! Get fired up! Don't act like none of you have done that!
And then, the next month, they loved me so much they sent us a love letter: "We love you so much! Please send us $359.96 to prove you love us!" Isn't it weird how you remember payments to the penny?
And then I bought a truck because every guy needs a truck. It's in the lost book of the Bible; I'm not sure which one, but I bought a truck—100% financed, $315.60 a month. And then I wanted to get married. I asked my college sweetheart to marry me, and she was from Frankfort, Illinois, and she said yes.
So, that Polish Southsider and I got married. We put everything on the credit card: the wedding ring, the wedding, the honeymoon—all on the credit card. And then we moved with a job transfer to South Carolina, bought a house, spent a ton of money on a house—$115,900 bucks! Seemed like a lot back then! You're laughing at me. I don't know what's—I guess I'm old!
But anyhow, we bought furniture, and based on my track record, do you think we paid cash for the furniture? No! 24 months, same as cash! We had furniture! And what I realized is I only know how to do one thing with money. What was that? Spend it! And I found out I was a talented spender. It's a gift! It's a spiritual gift! Who has the spiritual gift of spending in the house? All right, let's pray! Jesus, you see these hands! Deliver us, Lord! Amen! Both my hands are up! It's a gift!
Like you've heard Pastor Saul talk about the espresso coffee maker. Is anybody—has anybody bought one because of her talking about it? Well, let me tell you, I heard about it, and I bought me one! Listen, I got introduced to an espresso, and I went straight from not knowing it existed straight to needing it! Skipped "want," straight to "need" because I'm a spender.
And here's what I know: that spending-itis, that inability to tell ourselves "no," will keep us struggling. If you want to move from struggle to surplus, you have to employ great wisdom from the Word. There's a lot of wisdom.
Let's—I’m going to share a few select verses. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, 2 Corinthians 9:6. He said this: "Remember this: whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will reap generously."
And let's just say it stands to reason that he who sows nothing will reap nothing. And if you want to move from struggle to surplus, you’ve got to have something, not nothing. And in a world of great opportunity, we realize that to move from struggle to surplus, we’ve got to plant some seeds.
And I want to ask the question: at the current rate that you are sowing, what type of harvest can you reasonably expect to receive? Now, my father says he remembers these moments of looking in the rearview mirror, seeing all these eyes staring at him, and said, "How am I even going to feed them?"
And then he had the light bulb moment and said, "We can grow our food!" And without consulting my schedule, my mother would announce it was time to plant the garden. We planted large gardens, and despite my best efforts to misplant the seeds, they grew!
And I'm telling you, we grew like a quarter acre of green beans alone! And then, without consulting my schedule again, in a little-known form of child abuse, my mother would announce it was green bean picking day. Has anybody been blessed to have green bean picking day? Very special!
And after you pick them, guess what you got to do? You got to snap them or string them, and then we canned them! We put up 100 quarts of green beans at a time! The only thing that we redeemed was occasionally we got to share a glass bottle of Coca-Cola. The spirit of the Lord is in this place!
Oh, it's unbelievable! Anybody know it's different than a glass bottle? Yeah! But it wasn't every time. And we would can—we did not struggle for food, but we had a lot of green beans! I mean, I grew up picking green beans, and every fifth plant, I'd pull it out of the ground and throw it on the ground. I'm just admitting—I’ve confessed, right?
And I still had an abundant harvest and put up all these green beans. And so, I just want to ask this question: if you want to change from struggle to surplus, I have two questions. Those two questions are these: What are you sowing? And of what you are sowing, how much of that are you sowing?
Let me ask you some questions. Let's enter into horticulture class! I brought some pictures of some seeds to share with you. So, let's look at this seed here. Let's put a seed up here, and I want you to guess what that seed will grow.
Well, I hear beans! So, yes! Let's show them what it will grow. We got it on the screens here. What does it produce? Well, looky there! It's a Blue Lake Bush green bean! Get fired up!
Okay, let's show them another seed. Let's put another seed up here. Anybody know what that grows? Oh, you sound confident! A pumpkin! And so, a pumpkin—well, looky there! There it is! Some of you just carved some; that's awesome!
And let's show you another one. I'm going to make it a little harder here. Anybody know what this one is? Sunflower? Watermelon? Let's look at it. Well, it's a watermelon! We don't even recognize it anymore because they're all seedless, right?
Okay, let me show you one more. Now, I made it really difficult. This is not a rock; this is not a pebble. Let me show you, my friends, is a loofah! Did you know you can grow the rubber-duck scrub-in-the-tub sponge? Loofah sponge! I grow them in South Carolina! Isn't that awesome? You can buy them $3.99 on Amazon! Get fired up! See, when you come to CLC, you learn things!
Now, let me show you a couple other seeds. Anybody know this one? It's a weed, but we feed it to the birds, particularly in the winter. Let's show you what it is. It's a thistle—Canadian thistle!
And let's show you one more. You'll all know this one. Oh yeah, you pi! You remember picking those and blowing on those as a kid, right? Let's show them what it produces. Yep, that good old dandelion!
Okay, so would it be odd to plant a marigold or a dandelion seed and expect green beans to grow from it? That would be very odd! That's not going to happen! God says there is order, and there is an order to things. And of what you plant, that which you shall reap. This is the principle of sowing and reaping.
And I will tell you, every springtime, the farmer plants corn; he harvests corn, not beans from that field. But I will tell you, the farmer could fast for 21 days and plant nothing, and there will be no harvest because the only number God cannot bless is a zero. Write that down! Get your phone out right now! Write that down!
The only—listen, if you're struggling and you're investing nothing yet you're expecting God to bless you with abundance, you have misunderstood God's Word. The only number God cannot bless is a zero!
In fact, I remember as my kids were learning multiplication, you know, you remember as you teach kids about multiplication: "What's two times two?" "Okay, what's three times two?" And you could see the confidence rising as they know the numbers.
And then I would throw a big one at them. I'd say, "You know what's 78,000 times zero?" And you could see their eyes start going, "311 times zero? What's that equal?" "Zero!" They would burst into a big smile and say, "That's zero, Daddy!" And I'm like, "That's right!"
Unless you think I'm only talking about money, this applies to every area of your life. Now, I have an oldest daughter. She's turning 24 next Sunday. I remember when she went to college. She went to college on an athletic scholarship as a runner. She's a very fast runner. She's faster than Forrest Gump! I can't even compete with her!
Starting in seventh grade, she got a full ride. She was contacted by 119 college coaches. She made the NCAA championships. It was unbelievable! But she runs, on average, 70 miles a week. She eats voraciously to feed that running, and she wore through shoes like it was nothing!
And I was like, "I need Michelin shoes!" Right? And so, I remember in running 70 miles a week takes time. She decided to get a job, and she decided to sign up for 21 credit hours.
Well, is anybody surprised that a month later she's over there saying, "I'm so nervous and anxious, and I can't!" Chewing her fingernails off! And I'm like, "Hey, baby girl, maybe you're sowing seeds of that!"
Let me introduce you to an amazing thing called "drop and add." You need to drop some classes! And she dropped some classes, and all of a sudden, it fell back in line.
So, if you have chaos in your life, can I just step in here a little bit? I need you to ask the question: "Hey, are you sowing that?" And if you are, what do you need to do to stop sowing that?
Hey, listen, if you've got loss of control of your schedule, your time—hey, maybe you're sowing those seeds. Maybe you need to learn a very powerful word called "no."
Yeah, so we're talking about money, but we're talking about everything! So listen, when you give to God's work, that is investing; that is sowing. That's a spiritual harvest! When you sow into a mutual fund, that is sowing into an investment. The only number God can't bless is a zero!
And so, I challenge you with this. In fact, $50 a month—if you did $50 a month for 40 years and got an 8% annual return, that would equal $174,000! Why didn't they teach us this in kindergarten?
But listen, and so let me ask you the question: Are you sowing into God's kingdom? Because listen, it's not a salvation issue, but if you want to move from struggle to surplus throughout God's Word, remember Him; He will remember you.
Let me give you the references: Malachi 3:10: "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse." Proverbs 3:9: "Honor the Lord with the first fruits of all your crops." Haggai 1:6: "You eat, but never have enough; you drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm; you earn wages only to put them in a purse with holes in it."
Why? "Because of my house, which remains a ruin while you yourselves live in your own paneled houses."
So let me ask you a question: Are you putting God first? Are you investing in God's kingdom? Because there are some blessings that will not be unlocked in your life until you put Him first.
Hey, I'm just going to—are we friends? Ultimately, for a Christ follower, there are really two reasons why people don't give to God's work. There's really only two. Here's the number one: We don't know what God's Word says about it. We just don't know.
The second one is we know what God's Word says; we just choose not to do it. You can give lots of excuses: "I have too many payments; I have too many bills; I don't have enough income; I don't feel like it; I don't want to," right? All those different things.
God's never given me a dollar that didn't have a dime for His kingdom in it—ever! So if you want to move from struggle to surplus, you've got to remember the Lord.
And I encourage you that we're not talking just struggling surplus financially; we're talking within your soul. There's something that is unlocked when you invest in His kingdom work. There's something that's unlocked when you invest in financial investments.
And you move to the second thing: If we're changing from "owe" to "own," you get to get rid of the "E" and put in a consonant called an "N." You move from "owe" to "own."
How many of you know there's a difference? Proverbs 22:7 says, "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender." We've heard that verse. Many of us have heard that verse. It's a statement of fact; it's an observation.
Many people say, "I have debt; I'm not a slave to the lender." I would say, "Skip a couple of payments, and you will quickly figure out that there is a relationship there." And when they say "jump," you're going to have to say "how high." That's a fact! It's just a relationship.
Now, let me be clear: Debt creates a relationship with the lender. If we want to have dough that has bread so we can have bread—that's the series—then we have to recognize debt does create a relationship with a lender.
And we have to recognize not all debts are created equal. If I have debt on a credit card, that's different than a mortgage on my house. And a mortgage on my house is different than a mortgage on a rental house that produces income or into a business.
And I also want to be very clear: The Bible is clear; debt is not a sin. It is not a sin! But it is a sin to not repay what we've borrowed. Amen?
Romans 13:8 says, "Let no debt remain outstanding except for one great one: the continuing debt to do what? To love one another! For whoever loves others has fulfilled the law."
But I will tell you, I have yet to meet the first person that says, "Joe, I became wildly wealthy, and I owe it all to my credit cards." Have you met that person? I have met thousands who have credit card debt that has robbed them.
So, I will tell you, I do have credit cards. I redeemed over 550,000 points this week because our business runs a lot through credit cards, and we give those gift cards in cash away to our employees at Christmas. They seem to like it.
And let me tell you how much interest do you think we paid on that? $0! Why? Because we have a plan, and we pay it off every month!
But let me tell you some facts. As of 2023, this year, the average monthly car payment for new vehicles is $729. Get fired up! Some of you are like, "I know that! I'm living that!" That's a fact!
Okay, now let's look at this financial investment. If you chose to instead invest that $729 a month for 20 years and got an 8% annual return, that would be worth just $429,000! Wow! That's all, though! Isn't that a crazy, incredible number? How much will that car be worth 20 years from now? Yeah, close to zero!
But let me tell you what happens. The average credit card debt in America is $7,951 bucks. I had piles of debt, and a day came where I said, "I'm tired of struggling." I broke open God's Word, and I started reading this verse. Many of you have it as your life verse: Jeremiah 29:11. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to help you scrape by." No, that's not what it says! "Plans to help you barely pay your bills." Plans to what? What's the word say? "Prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and hope."
So here's what I would just challenge you with. I read that, and I started saying, "Lord, help me say no! Help me stop spending!" Because it needs the power of God to help me stop spending.
And so, I paid off my truck—my 1997 GMC 1500 with a terrible—it's Charles Barkley's word—"trbl." It's how it's spelled: "turble." That turble right there with a terrible V6 engine! No engineer should ever put a V6 in a truck, but someone did!
I paid it off in 2002, and I have that truck still in my barn! I drove a 1997 GMC 1500 with a V6. I'm not kidding! I drove it to a church, and they pointed me to the front and parked right in the special guest parking spot! I parked that truck there with the smashed-in side where I hit a fence with it once, and the pastor looked at me and said, "If that's what it takes to not be broke, I'm not sure I'm on board with you!" No joke!
But he knew what was happening, and I kept paying myself the payment for 19 years. And let me tell you, in 2021, the day came where it's like, "This needs to be retired to the farm! Like, it's going to drive a little!" But I went and bought me a 2021 Dodge Ram with a V8 Hemi!
Where I said, "No, I did not say no to any option!" And we wrote a check! Come on, get fired up! Do you know why that happened?
Hey, listen, there was 19 years of driving a very old truck that no one was jealous of, no one was envious of. I was just doing my pastoral duty to not cause anyone to covet! But I chose to live like few are willing to live, and it has allowed me, as Dave Ramsey says, to live how many only dream of living!
In fact, I just want to ask the question: How much money in your household goes to service debt each month? How much is it? Bill Paris, you know who you are! Yep! So, God, somebody says zero! Is it awesome? Get fired up! I have a witness in the house!
And let me tell you, what could you do if you became debt-free, including the house? Remember that moment at the start of the service when I said, "What if you could start out a month and have no bills?" Yeah, you can have that!
Now, you're going to have a utility bill unless you have solar and you're completely off the grid, and you can do that now! Yeah! And you're going to have to buy some food unless you grow your own, but you're probably going to buy some, right? But you can eliminate almost them!
And the question that I want you to ponder this week is: What would life be like if you had none of that? No debt! Would life be different? Who could you bless?
I've got a witness who is living it! I'm living it! And I will just tell you that as you go, let me give you some quick tips. At the financial learning experience at 3:00, I'll go into detail on these, but you could refinance debts, you could eliminate a bill, you could stop charging more, you could work overtime or an extra job, you could say no multiple times, especially to the kids!
And I hear it's really hard to say no to the grandkids! Yes! You can use cash envelopes, also known as cash stuffing! But I want you to ponder what it would look like if you moved from "owe" to "own."
My last one that I wanted to share today is from greed to generosity. Jesus wants us to do this. He knows what's at stake. In chapter 6 of Matthew, verse 21, He says, "For where your treasure is, you've heard this, there your heart will be also."
And this is where Jesus reveals why He cares about our giving and our money management. He knows what's attached to it—our heart! He's in the heart business! Three verses later, He does the summary statement that is so powerful. He said, "No one can serve two masters. Either you hate the one and love the other, or you'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."
The King James Version that I grew up in says, "You cannot serve both God and Mammon." You can't serve it! It's a terrible God! It will disappoint you greatly!
And here's what I know: when you choose to move—and it's a choice! Sometimes it's a daily choice; sometimes it's an hourly choice. When you choose to move from greed to generosity, there is sacrifice required where you say no to something you might want. You have to fire your waiter, and you choose to be generous.
And that sacrifice spawns a deep-rooted gratefulness. In fact, in Luke 12:15-21, it says, "Jesus then said to them, 'Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed. Life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.'"
And He told them a parable: "The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' Then he said, 'This is what I'll do: I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. There I'll store my surplus grain.' That's not a problem! But watch this! It's here! I'll say to myself, 'You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink, and be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'"
This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves, but everybody say "but!" But is not rich towards God!
Let me tell you how this played out in Joe and Jin Sangle's life. We have three children. My wife had ovarian tumors when she was a junior in high school, and they didn't know if we could have children. So, you can imagine how excited we were when two years into our marriage we found out a baby girl was on the way!
And so, we had baby Malia. Malia was a strange name until there was a certain president who had two daughters, Sasha and Malia. Then it became less unknown! But we had baby Malia, and she grew up. We had a 10-year gap before we could have another child, and God sent us a son. He's 13 now.
And then we had a bonus baby girl show up when I was 40! Get fired up! I have a 10-year-old baby girl! The Lord works in mysterious ways!
But anyhow, my daughter in high school had a friend whose mother fell ill, went to the hospital for what seemed like routine care, and ended up dying in two days. Her father was not in her life at all, and she found herself 17 years old, no parents, no one.
And I don't know if you know how Social Security works, but it pays you and a caregiver until you turn 18, and then all the money goes away. In the middle of her senior year, all the money went away, and the caregiver went away.
And so, my daughter came to us and said, "We have an empty bedroom. Could she live with us?" And we chose to invite a teenage girl to our house when we already had one wild teenage girl!
Anybody who's had them! And so, we got a bonus daughter named China, and China moved in with us and lived with us for three years. We were able to be blessed to provide housing, food—we sent her to college! And within the next year, she's going to graduate with her degree in nursing! Get fired up! I'm so pumped!
But that required sacrifice. Our space was invaded, right? She was not necessarily cleanliness was not her favorite. The room was kind of like my other daughter's crazy mess, right? But it was a blessing and an honor.
And I remember a family member came to us when she was saying, "I'm going to move in with the Sangles," and they're like, "Why are you doing this? This doesn't make any sense!"
And I went straight to God's Word where it says, "If you have two of one, you're to give one away." And we got to go live it, and it's awesome!
In the moment where you start it, but then there's a middle of it where there's some sacrifice, but it was awesome all through it.
And so, I just want to challenge you from moving this greed to generosity. If you've never put God first and you've served the Lord for 10 years, hey, if you don't start today, when will it be? Like, for real! When will it happen? Start today!
Come on, just test Him—not me! Hey, when this is all over, I'm going to go get on my private jet and fly home. It says "American Airlines" on the tail. There'll be 170 of my closest friends flying with me, but I'm going home to South Carolina!
But I know what's in store for you, and I remember this great moment when my bride and I finally surrendered all of our finances to the Lord. I was watching my beloved Chicago Cubs lose another baseball game—this is back when they were really bad—and my bride came in and said, "Joseph, what do you think of this budget?"
Well, I'm a spender! What do you think I think of the budget? I burst into rap poetry! I said, "My name is Joe, and that budget makes me say no, and that interrupts my flow, so it's got to go!"
Well, she was cute, so I decided to look at it. And then I realized it could be an Excel spreadsheet! I ran into our computer room and got on our Gateway 2000 computer—some of you remember what I'm talking about—and put together a budget.
And we put God first in there, and let me tell you, we didn't even wrestle with the net or the gross. We just said, "We're going to tithe on all of it! We're done being broke!"
And then we put a second line item in there called "intentionally bless others." Let me explain what that means. We felt compelled that we wanted to make this active in our life, and so we put a line item in the budget called "intentionally bless others."
Now, you need to know something about my bride. She's beautiful; she's wildly intelligent, straight-A college student. She's a school teacher. She cannot spell with a lick! It's bad, y'all! Like, at the end of her first year of school teaching, the students bought her a t-shirt that's all misspelled that says "Hooked on Panic."
A working for me! It's all misspelled! Like, she wrote me love notes in college, and I edited them. There was an average of 50 spelling errors per page! I'm not kidding! I spelled "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" correct in third grade!
And so, it was cute! I think it's cute! But instead of writing "intentionally bless others" with the "i-o-n" in it, she left it out! So, in the Sangle family, we don't intentionally bless; we intentionally bless others!
But every month, we put God first and intentionally bless others second—intentionally bless others second! And it's cash! We pull it out in cash every month, and we carry it with us!
And it turns out if you put a line item in your budget called "intentionally bless others" or "intentionally bless others," God will give you opportunities to intentionally bless others! It'll become one of the greatest areas of your financial journey!
And you're like, "Joe, I'm in the struggle bus! I'm still trying to make it to Thursday!" I get it! Listen, we're able to put a lot now because we got free! You can start with five bucks a month! Put it in your pocket! You might be able to buy Starbucks for somebody!
If Jesus Himself—it's not how much you give; it's in proportion to how much you have right now! And watch what God does! Will you do it?
Listen, I compel you to do it! This afternoon at 3:00, I'm going to teach a financial learning experience, and I'm going to show you practically how to apply the spiritual principles. There are over 100 free financial tools, budgeting tools, debt payoff calculators, investing calculators, and we're going to have a blast going through it!
I encourage you to sign up for it! I want to help you get set free! And if you're already winning, to be able to put tools in your hands to go teach the others in your life so that we can all be known as generous people!
Hey, CLC, may this house be filled with people known in the community as generous people! May you be known in your workplace as generous people! May you be known in your classrooms to students! Hey, in your friendships, even the random strangers on the street, may you be known as givers!
Will you pray with me?
Lord, I thank You so much for Your Word. God, I thank You so much for this church. I thank You for this people, this faith family. Lord, when I walked in the doors, Lord, I felt something in this place. Lord, You are preparing to do an amazing work!
Lord, I thank You that You do provide such practical wisdom in Your Word for something that we may initially think is not spiritual, but when we break it down, we know this financial stuff is a reflection of our heart.
Lord, help us to be known as generous people! Lord, help us to be known as investors! Lord, help us to be owners, the head, not the tail! And Lord, for those here who are struggling, many times, Lord, we want to know steps A, B through Z, but Lord, today we place our hands into Your hands. We place our feet into You, Lord, and we are just asking, "Provide us the next step!"
Lord, will You do it? And God, help us to have the faith to know that we can take it! Lord Jesus, we thank You that You died and You paid a debt that we could never repay, and You paid a debt of sin, and You gave us that free gift of salvation.
As it's written in Romans 10:9, that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and we believe in our heart that You've been raised from the dead, Jesus, You acknowledge that we will be saved!
Jesus, we pray that salvation would be in this house today! We'll never get over that outrageously extravagant gift! It's in Your name we pray, in Jesus' name, and all God's people said, "Amen!" God bless each of you! Thank you!
on Nov 06, 2023
