Financial Tip # 8 - What is Between Before and After?

You see it all over the internet. It’s in magazines, newspapers, and on television: The Two Picture advertisement. The picture on the right-side shows a very attractive woman. She’s thin, toned, and usually wearing a bikini. Her hair is done up and her makeup is perfect. That’s the “After” shot. The left side, the picture you should have looked at first shows a different woman. She’s not so pretty. She’s fat, wearing frumpy clothes, an out of date hairstyle, and only draws your eye in mockery of the other picture. That’s the “Before” shot. Sometimes these ads use men, in which case you see a dumpy guy with love handles magically transformed into a muscular, ripped hunk who somehow has more hair and got tanned. The suggestion of these advertisements is usually that, if you use the instant diet/fast-working cream/15-minute program/etc. that they are selling, you too will go from bumpy to beautiful in no time at all.

Let’s be honest here. Life just doesn’t work that way. There are NO magic potions. No matter what you choose to lose weight, there is pain and work involved if you really want to lose the weight. I have a friend, Danny, who used to weigh close to 500 pounds. It took him about three years of working out and eating healthy to reach a healthy and muscular 250 pounds. He now helps other people do the same. He’ll tell you that there aren’t any magic potions or pill, just will-power, accountability, discipline, effort, and time. Personally, I have struggled with weight and have taken almost four years to lose 70 pounds. That’s four years of struggle, falling down and getting back up, eating right, working out, etc.

This brings us to our financial tip of today: There is space between the before and after. If you want to have a relatively secure financial situation, it takes work. If you want to be wealthy, you have to have discipline. If you want to be in control of your money it takes effort. If you want to be debt free and no longer a slave to your creditors, it takes time. There are plenty of books, cd's, and programs that promise you get-rich-quick ideas, but these just don't generally work. It takes real work to get there.

Hard work is not a four-letter word (yes, I know it is two four letter words). Discipline didn’t use to be a bad word. Our culture has become saturated by get rich quick schemes. Microwave food, fast food restaurants, instant financing, quick money making opportunities… Now, now, now. The problem is, this type of attitude just doesn’t work for most people. Sure, some people do hit that big idea that turns them into an instant millionaire. But, most of your millionaires didn’t get there that way.

I’m not a millionaire. I’m just a guy who sees the pain and suffering that friends and family suffer in the throws of debt and I know there is a better way. It just takes hard work.

Don’t be afraid to sit down and look at your real financial situation. It’s like taking out a camera and taking your before shot. Your finances may be bumpy, ugly, and not something you want to look at; but, with brutal honest, hard work, accountability, and discipline, you can have sexy finances too. Not through magic potions, but through work.

Hard work and discipline worked for our grandparents, getting them through the Great Depression. It works for immigrants and refugees who come here with nothing. Let it work for you too.

Just remember, it takes time to get from Before to After.

Proverbs 13:11 - Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.

By the way, if you want Danny to help you get from Before to After in your weight loss goals, he can be found at www.dviiifitness.com. I promise you, he will help you, but you will have to work hard for it.

Disclaimer: I am not a trained financial advisor, I just play one on this blog. Seriously. Get good financial advice in life. My information comes primarily from personal experience, working in consumer lending in the banking industry, and watching friends, family, and parishioners struggle. But, much of this is common sense; most people just don't use their common sense when it comes to financial matters.

Are You Being Served?

Over more than a decade in ministry, I have watched an interesting phenomenon occur. There are a group of church-attenders who leave another church, show up at ours, stay for awhile, and then leave to go to a new church down the road. There, presumably they repeat the process.
Upon their arrival, they generally have something negative to say about their previous church and upon leaving, they generally have something negative to say about us.

The most common reason that I have heard is, “I’m wasn’t being fed.” This is then followed by some need that they have that wasn’t being met by the church: “no one came up to me and talked to me on Sundays” or “my marriage was in trouble and no one helped me” or I really want a small group for singles over the age of forty.”

Each of these reasons goes back to the original, “I’m not being fed.” Can you hear the selfishness and laziness of that statement? Several of the Proverbs speak of the ‘sluggard.’ My favorite is, "the sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth.” I love the picture here of this lazy guy putting his hand in the bowl of food and just being too lazy to lift it back up to his lips. The application here is obvious. “I’m not being fed” translates to, I want someone else to fill my needs and I am too busy to do anything about it myself.

The writer of Hebrews says, “We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.” Did you hear that? He says, “Quit being babies and grow up!” He tells them that they ought to be able to teach themselves and others by now, but they are so immature that they aren’t ready for it.

I cannot speak for every other church, but this one has some excellent teaching. Our preaching pastor is an expert in his field, he teaches other pastors how to preach. He is gifted at combining the art and science of hermeneutics and homiletics into an interesting and informative lesson. We also have small groups with good teaching in them. Also, almost every other church that I have visited falls into this category. The teaching is usually very good. It has been a rare occasion indeed when I have left a sister church taking issue with their teachings. This tells me that the food is there, it just isn’t making it to their lips.

The picture we need to get is of a giant Thanksgiving dinner. The whole family is there along with many guests. There is a spread of food on the table, enough to make it sag. There is turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce (the real kind with whole cranberries, nuts, and orange peels), green bean casserole, hot fresh bread with real butter dripping off of it, mincemeat, sweet potato pie, and all the other fixin’s that you could imagine. Much of the family and guests are eating, but there are a few that are just sitting there. Grown adults, salivating at the smells, their stomachs are grumbling, but they just sit there with their hands at their sides, their plates empty…waiting for someone else to put food in their mouth.

That is not what the Christian life is.

There is no call for servants of Jesus to sit there and let others do for them, in fact, quite the opposite. All of the New Testament is a call to action. It is full of verbs:
Make disciples, Serve one another, Be, Do, Love…

The message of God’s Kingdom is not, what has the church done for me lately; it is, How can I serve God and others. It has nothing to do with my own entertainment and everything to do with the sacrificial giving of my time, money, and self to God’s work.

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul compares the church to a body. We are all parts (eyes, hands, feet, stomachs, etc) and all of us have parts to serve the body as a whole. It is time that we separate our consumer-driven culture from our church body. We are not a business, we are a Body, a community, a family.

Picture that Thanksgiving dinner again. This time, we work together. I’ll roast the turkey because I have a wonderful recipe for brining it that makes it extra juicy. Aunt Meg will bake the bread because that’s what she does. Dad will make the cranberry dressing using grandma’s old iron crank grinder bolted to the edge of the kitchen table. My friend Kris will bring over her fancy china and we’ll ask Denise and Hazel to make a beautiful centerpiece. Grandma Ruth Gonzeles will bring the giblet gravy and all the little girls will set the table while the boys bring in a bunch of mismatched chairs for everyone to sit on. Dan Vincent will make the pumpkin pies and Chip will say the blessing. Theo will show up bringing a homeless person that he just met and Earl will be ready to take the leftovers from the meal to the rescue mission. When the meal is done, we’ll all clean the dishes and then sit down on the porch and talk with each other while the kids play in the back yard.

That is the body of Christ, each person actively doing their part and all of us spending time in community…In communion.

If you want to be fed, pick up your Bible and start reading

If you want to be fed, volunteer at the church or at a service ministry.

If you want to be fed, begin introducing yourself to others at church.

If you want to be fed, join a small group Bible study.

If you want to be fed, stick around after church and get to know others.

If you want to be fed, you’ve got to do some of the work - feed yourself.

If you are one of those who tells me that you aren’t being fed, don’t be surprised if I don’t have a sympathetic ear. In this house, if you don’t work, you don’t eat! (2 Thessalonians 3:9-15)


Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. 1Peter 4:10