Trusting God completely means having faith that He knows what is best for your life. You expect Him to keep His promises, help you with problems, and do the impossible when necessary.
Rick Warren
I laughed when I saw a cartoon of two career-type women, both dripping in bling and overly coiffed, chatting over lunch in a chichi restaurant. One says to the other, “Well, I have a faith-based retirement plan. I have faith that somehow everything will just all work out.” Ha-ha. That’s a good one.
But then I started thinking. That sounds like my retirement plan. I’m making reasonable preparations for retirement, avoiding debt and living below my means while paying off our mortgage—then trusting God for the outcome.
As I am writing this, the United States is still in recovery mode following the most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression. Unemployment seems stuck on high, while the housing market inches its way back to prosperity. Whatever today’s or tomorrow’s economic problems may be, I know that God is much bigger than all of them. He’s greater than any economic crisis and knows with certainty what lies ahead. He promises never to leave me or forsake me, to be the same yesterday, today, and forever. This is why I am making reasonable preparations for retirement while not obsessing about it and trusting God for the outcome.
It wasn’t until I’d wasted many years and made some really dumb choices that I finally learned how God feels about money. The most surprising thing for me was that God knows about my needs and cares about my wants. Money is important to God, so it’s right that it should be important to me too.
The Bible is chock-full of financial advice—advice on how to get out of debt, how to stay out of debt, how to become financially stable, how to save, how to spend, how to prosper, how to invest, how not to waste your money, how to make the most of it, and how to have your money work for you.
Many of the money principles are more than suggestions or guidelines. They’re laws. God’s laws. Just as in your day-to-day life, where you can choose to obey or disobey laws that govern society, you can choose to obey or disobey God’s laws on money.
Jesus often taught through stories known as parables. One of these stories is known as the parable of the talents (see Matt. 25:14–30). In this teaching story, Jesus gave us four principles or money laws.
But first, a little background. A talent in biblical times didn’t refer to your awesome ability to play Beethoven’s Fifth on the harmonica, although that would be considered quite a talent. A talent was equal in value to 130 pounds of gold. Today, at about $1,750 an ounce, we’re talking about $28,000 for one pound of gold times 130 pounds. Roughly speaking, one talent today would be worth $3,640,000—more than three and a half million dollars!
Now that we have an idea of what Jesus was talking about in terms of money, let’s look at the story.
Jesus’s Money Lesson
A wealthy businessman decides to go on an extended trip. Rather than put his money into the bank for safekeeping, he calls in three of his employees. He tells them he’s leaving for a while and gives them the job of taking care of his wealth. The guy hands over bags of gold to them (each bag weighing one talent), but not in equal amounts. He trusts them with his wealth according to their ability to manage money.
The servant who is given five bags of gold to manage goes out and puts his money to work. He doubles the five bags to ten bags (that’s $36,400,000 if you’re counting). The next servant gets two bags of gold, and he does the same thing. He invests the money and doubles it to four bags of gold, or $14,560,000.
The third servant is scared of the stock market and the real estate market—and isn’t even sure about the loan market. Cowardly, he digs a hole and puts the one bag of gold into the ground where it will be safe from thieves.
After a long time the master comes back and calls the servants in for an accounting. The first and second servants report that they doubled the money. The man is pleased with their results, thanks them for their hard work, and promises that since he knows how much he can trust them he will put them in charge of even more of his wealth in the future.
Then he calls in nervous Ned. I can almost see Ned standing there all sheepish and ashamed. Ned owns up to his fears, telling the master he was so afraid of losing the gold that he hid it in the ground to keep it safe.
I’m sure this wimpy guy was hoping against hope that he’d at least get an “attaboy!” for returning the entire amount safely to its rightful owner. But no. Not a chance.
The master is more than a little bit disappointed. “You wicked, lazy servant! I taught you to sow, gather, and then harvest to increase your holdings. But did you do what you were taught? No. Worse, you weren’t even responsible enough to put the gold in the bank, where it could have earned interest. That would have been better than nothing” (paraphrase of Matt. 25:26–27).
What comes next just floors me. Not only does the master take the money from Ned, but he gives it to employee number one—the guy who turned his five bags of gold into ten. I don’t know why that is so shocking to me, because I have to admit that if I were the master, I’d do the same thing. After all, if the first servant is that smart with money, I’d want him managing my wealth too.
We find the hook of the story in verses 29–30: “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Did you get that? He called Ned a worthless servant. See? Money is important to God. In fact, I would say God is quite passionate about it and becomes displeased over the mismanagement of it, as evidenced by the weeping, gnashing of teeth, and utter darkness.
Jesus didn’t tell his disciples this story to amuse them. Let’s take a look at four financial principles in this story.
God Is the Source
If you see your employer, your spouse, your investments, your trust account, your parents, or any other entity as the source of your income, now and in the future, you are setting yourself up for a great deal of worry. Employers go away, parents and spouses die, investments can turn sour overnight. The truth is that all of these are only conduits in the delivery system. They are the channels through which you receive money, but they are not the ultimate source.
God, who gave you the intelligence, ability, and skill to think and work is the source of your money. Money is the method by which God meets your needs for food, shelter, and clothing. And when he gives you more than you need, he has expectations for how you will care for those resources.
Grabbing onto this truth will bring a sense of peace and calm to your life. No longer will you fear a drop in the stock market or the plunging of real estate values. No longer will you lie awake worrying about losing your job. The way your money is delivered may change radically and frequently, but the source never changes. It is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Everything I Have Belongs to God
Nothing you have belongs to you. God owns it, and then he loans it to you for the seventy or eighty years you have on earth. You arrived with nothing, and you’re going to leave in that same condition. All of us are on a short layover here on earth, a blip on the screen of eternity.
That job you have, that paycheck—they aren’t yours. Neither is the trust account your parents set up for your education. Or the car you drive or even the home you purchased. Your health, intelligence, skills, abilities, relationships, and opportunities don’t belong to you either. God is watching closely to see how you’re taking care of everything he has entrusted to you. The sooner you learn this truth so well that it engulfs your every thought, the sooner you will enjoy the freedom God has for you to be the best manager possible of all the blessings he has for you both now and in the future.
Money Is to Be Used
God expects us to use and invest what he’s given us to manage. Money is a tool to be used wisely, not hoarded, buried, obsessed over, or stockpiled. As we think about retirement, this is such an important principle.
In the parable, the master gave three rewards to the two honorable servants: (1) They received praise and affirmation, (2) they got promotions with greater responsibility, and (3) they received an invitation to celebrate.
What you do with money reveals your true character. The way you use it says a lot about who you really are and what you value.
Money Is to Be Saved and Invested
Money is a tool to be invested, not buried. Saving and investing are honorable methods by which to prepare for your retirement needs in the future. This way your kids, church, or society won’t have to provide for you. That’s the loving and responsible way to operate as a wise money manager.
God sees your life on earth as one event, not a series of pay periods. He sees what challenges lie ahead; he knows the number of your days. He’s been providing for your present and your future all along. He is watching to see how you manage the money that comes into your life. If you spend it all, saving nothing for emergencies and investing nothing for the future so that you just limp from one paycheck to the next, you need to ask yourself just how trustworthy you are.
Let me illustrate this. Let’s say your child, who is a reasonably mature fourteen-year-old, requires $45 per month to pay for her school lunches. You could give her the $45 at the beginning of the month with instructions for how to manage it so that she has enough to pay for the very last meal of the month. That would take some teaching and a lot of trust, depending on the maturity and ability of the child.
You decide to give it a try. You pony up $45 on the first day of the month and give clear instructions you are convinced she understands fully. You’re determined to keep a close eye on this situation to ascertain if you can trust her to follow your instructions when there are so many things that could distract her now that she has money in her possession.
She buys lunch the first day but then sees a really cute blouse on day two. She spends the balance of her money, and you learn a lot. This child needs more instruction and practice before she can be trusted with the entire amount.
You go over the rules again, this time dividing the month into weeks. You hand her $11.25 to buy lunch for one week. This time she makes it through Wednesday, but somehow the rest of the money manages to disappear. She did somewhat better, but still she demonstrated she cannot yet be trusted with that much money. You patiently continue but with full knowledge that if she keeps flunking your tests, your trust in her will diminish proportionately.
It would not be at all unreasonable for you as the parent to determine that for now this child can only be trusted to manage her lunch money one day at a time. If you trust her with more, she breaks your rules and spends it on something else. Your heart aches, because at her age you believe she should be mature enough to manage her lunch money and even more, like maybe her clothing money. Perhaps even more than that. You’d love for her to demonstrate that kind of maturity. In fact, you’d be thrilled to turn a lot more of your resources over to her care, if only she could see beyond her selfish wants and desires.
Let me ask you: How much can God trust you? Have you demonstrated that you can be faithful with much? Or are you on some kind of week-by-week, hand-to-mouth, paycheck-to-paycheck kind of program?
You might say that if God were to hand you a boatload of money, you’d turn into an awesome manager on the spot. With your measly weekly paycheck, you haven’t been given a chance to do that. Right? Well, let’s see just how much he’s entrusted to you so far. Take your annual household income and multiply that by your age minus twenty-one. Let’s use $50,000 as your income and forty-seven as your age.
$50,000 x [47–21] = $1,300,000.
That looks like quite a large sum of money to me. It’s a very rough estimate of the amount of money that has come into your possession and for which you have made decisions on where it should go. I can hear your objections. “I haven’t always had a household income of $50,000 (or insert your dollar figure of choice)!” You’re right, but this is an estimate to illustrate a principle. If your figure is different, it’s still a large number. And I deducted the first twenty-one years of your life. I suspect if you could come up with an exact figure for our little exercise here, it would be significant.
While we’re doing math, let’s look at another number. Let’s multiply your current household income by fifty years, a realistic working career in the United States.
$50,000 x 50 = $2,500,000
This number does not take into account any promotions, raises, or increases. It’s simply a ballpark figure, and a low one at that, given the span of half a century. There is no doubt that you are managing a fortune, which you’re receiving incrementally over a long period of time. And I say this even if you do not have a job in which you earn your own income. You may be a stay-at-home mom or simply do not work for one reason or another. You’re still part of a household, and, as such, I assume you have a say in how your family’s resources are allocated.
Although the numbers may be fictional, they illustrate a stunning truth: You’ve been entrusted with a lot of money, and you will be entrusted with more in the future. Look, I’m the last one to point a finger. It is the sorrow of my life that I wasted so much time and so much money. I was a miserable failure as a steward whom God could trust. But I found forgiveness and redemption.
Reminds Me of a Joke
As the story goes, Rachel was a very devout woman. One day, she found herself caught in a flood. When the water was up to her knees, a neighbor came by in a rowboat and offered her a ride to safety. Rachel replied, “No, thanks. I believe God will take care of me.”
The water continued to rise, and Rachel found herself crawling up a ladder to the roof. When she reached the roof, a sheriff in a boat came by and offered to take her to safety. But Rachel told him, “No, thanks. I believe God will take care of me.”
Soon the sun began to set, darkness was all around, and Rachel found herself sitting on the highest point of her roof, her feet in the water. A rescue helicopter came by and lowered a ladder down to Rachel. But Rachel shouted, “No, thanks. I believe in God, and he will take care of me.”
The waters kept rising, and eventually Rachel drowned. When she got to heaven, Rachel went to God and said, “I don’t understand. I tried to be a devout woman. I was faithful, believed strongly, and prayed constantly. And yet I am dead.”
In a loving but irritated tone, God replied, “What more would you have me do? I sent two boats and a helicopter!”
Okay, it’s a joke, but it speaks so much truth. God promises to meet our needs and tells us not to worry about the future. He knows the future. He sees what we will need not just today but even into retirement. He has been providing for our futures all along—in this week’s paycheck and next year’s bonus. And every day for years and years he has done that for us.
But even though God provides, we must also do our part. We must be good and faithful stewards. Saving for the future is not contrary to trusting God to provide. Saving and planning are marks of a responsible and trustworthy steward and a response to God’s faithful provision. God longs to bless us more and more as we become more trustworthy and financially mature.
I have lived in the darkness of greed and debt. And I’ve lived on the receiving end of God’s promise to reward trustworthiness. I highly recommend the latter.
Just Enough Light
Years ago, my husband and I were driving through California’s Mojave Desert at night. It was my turn to drive, while he slept. Let me tell you, it was dark!
What struck me in the black stillness of the night was how the headlights were not lighting the entire way. Those two beams of light illuminated about thirty feet in front of us. From my spot behind the wheel, I could easily see where the light ended. But as I moved into that light, the light moved ahead just a little bit more—lighting the way to our destination thirty feet at a time.
Playing a game of chicken with myself, I got up the nerve to turn off the headlights for a couple of seconds just to see how dark it really was. Not a good idea. Intellectually, I knew we would be fine for just a few seconds, but my brain could not overcome my emotions. Instant panic sent chills down my spine.
Without the light, we would have come to a complete stop—stuck in the middle of the desert until daybreak. Those two beams from the headlights gave me all the light I needed to move forward the next thirty feet and the next until we reached our destination.
I know I will never find peace by obsessively attempting to control or predict what will happen to me in the future. When my mind spins out of control with multiple scenarios, I feel peace slipping out of my grasp. The truth is that I cannot figure out the future. And when I try, I only drive myself crazy with anxiety and worry.
God does not reveal what is ahead, but he faithfully gives just the amount of light we need to take the next step and then the next. What a perfect antidote for anxiety and fear.
I believe I honor God when I make saving, investing, and planning for retirement a part of my stewardship. I cannot see the destination from where I am now, but I continue making plans with confidence and wisdom. Then I hand my plans over to God, trusting him for the outcome.