SJ Weekly Devotional – Retirement

Retirement Could it be the Great American Deception? Take a quick guess at how many times the Bible talks about retirement. Would you believe only two verses (technically one) that talks about retirement   (Numbers 8:24-25) Before you get excited that the Bible talks about retirement ask yourself this question: Are you a Levitical priest? If [...]

Render unto Caesar…

As Paul said, “Give to everyone what you owe them.  If you owe taxes, then pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor” (Romans 13:7).  We always tell clients that it is our duty to give to Uncle Sam what you rightfully owe, no more and no less.   You should [...]

The Joneses

We all know that keeping up with the Joneses is not a winnable game.  But somehow that knowledge does little to remove the temptation of trying to play this game to come out on top.  Paul speaks in 1 Cor 9:24-27 about competing as if to win the prize, and that is exactly what we [...]

This isn’t helping my Net Worth…

As of last week, the country’s net worth (debt, really) officially crossed over negative $11 trillion.  To be exact, it is now $11,033,157,578,669.78.  To put it in perspective, if you spent $15 million every day from when Jesus was born until now, you still wouldn’t have spent more than what our nation is in debt!  [...]

SJ Weekly Devotional – How Much is Enough?

He told them this parable, “The land of a certain rich man produced a good crop.  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, and there I’ll store all my [...]

What the Recession is For

I recently listened to John Piper’s sermon on What the recession is for. I thought it was excellent and worth passing along. He delivers a message about God’s purposes in the Recession.  Pastor John  gives 5 purposes of the Recession. 1. To Expose Sin and Bring Repentance 2. To Awaken us to World Poverty 3. To Relocate the Roots [...]

Getting Rid of Your Debt

Debt Snowball Excel tool The debt snowball is a great way to pay down debt. If you have not heard of this strategy, basically you line up your debts lowest balances to highest balances. You then figure out how much you can pay total to pay down debts. Then you begin paying minimum balances on [...]

The Crisis of Credit – Visualized

What is a “collateralized debt obligation”?  What does it mean to “securitize” debt?  We’ve all heard many of the fancy terms that supposedly got us into this financial mess, but there’s no one who seems to want to bother explaining it all.  It would probably take us about 20 posts to do a mediocre job [...]

SJ Weekly Devotional – Debt

Debt The Great Spiritual Inhibitor Last week we looked at Giving and what the Bible says about how to give.   This week we will look at Debt and what the Bible says about it. I have titled this post Debt – The Great Spiritual Inhibitor. I believe debt is often what often keeps us from [...]

How to Give

How to Give If you think for a moment, you can probably name a few books that deal with how to pray, how to lead your family, how to teach, how to serve, how to study scripture, but how many books can you think of that teach you how to give?  I can only think [...]