Faith Matters

What does it really mean for someone to have faith? I’ve heard many describe faith as believing in something that you can’t see, something you can’t touch, etc. Dictonary.com describes faith as confidence or faith in someone or something. Yet, how others think or describe faith really doesn’t matter. What does matter is how YOU would describe faith and how having that faith has affected your life.

How does faith matter in your everyday life? Do you really believe that God can do things for you? Do you really believe that He wants the best for you and will work with you to make your life the best that you will let Him? That’s right, that you’ll let Him. I say that because since He allowed free will… well to put it shortly, He has allowed us to get in the way. Yet through that He still has the ability and desire to make your life better, but do you have faith that this is the truth?

Faith for me took a while to develop. As a child I went to a Catholic church and I received a lot of knowledge about God. I memorized verses, I took steps to move forward in the church, etc. Yet, I didn’t have a full relationship with Jesus that allowed me to fully understand what faith is. I then slipped away from church and tried doing everything on my own. I eventually hit bottom and was working my way back up life-wise when I met my future wife wife Traci. She had a strong Baptist church background and we went to church together a few times while dating. Her faith showed and allowed me to get a glimpse of who God really is, which was something I desired. So I started back on the journey to learning more about God. We eventually found a church and were married there. It’s while at that church that I got a full understanding of what it is like to have real faith in something other than myself.

Yet, it wasn’t until this English pastor guy came to visit us after we visited Norwalk Alliance Church that my life was changed for good. I accepted Jesus into my life and started to experience real faith. Oh, and that faith was tested pretty quickly. I lost my job and Traci was a stay-at-home mom. We had mouths to feed, were trying to get out of debt, and it was through our combined faith in God that we were able to get through that time. We continually prayed in faith for God to work, and although it wasn’t an instant answer, He did answer eventually. Our faith in God gave us food when we had no money. That faith paid our bills when we couldn’t. And that faith allowed us to really see God work in our lives, and made us desire even more to walk with Him daily.

What has your faith done? Has your faith been tested? Did you have enough faith to stick with Him while He was sticking with you? What stories do you have where your faith in God has done incredible things in your life? How has your faith changed over the years? These are all stories I’d love to hear, and I hope you do share them with me.

Next Week: Church Matters

Money Matters

Every once in awhile I allude in this space to some of the money problems we’ve had in the past and how we’ve dealt with them. I don’t know how often I’ve told the complete story, so I’d like to go over it a bit here, hoping that it helps you as well.

In college Traci and I both used credit cards to finance things that we wanted or needed. Once we were married we combined our debt and worked on getting rid of some of it while still using credit. Eventually we got to a point where we had the cards all paid off and were working on paying off student loans. Then a career change came along and we started using credit regularly again. We got into some debt but were able to pay it off once again, only to go through another career change. That career change came with us having 2 kids, a stay-at-home wife, and no job for me. The debt kept growing as we were using the cards just to keep our heads above water.

Luckily, a job for me came along right as we were about to really start to sink in the debt that we were treading in. We started to reposition ourselves financially and eventually found the water not as deep. We decided that we didn’t want to get into debt any more. Since that day we’ve been working towards getting out of debt, a process that isn’t easy at all.

We started out by writing out all of our debts from largest to smallest (leaving our the student loans that we still owe, but we concentrated on the consumer debt first). We’ve worked through all of our credit cards, paying off thousands of dollars on them. We’ve paid off both of our cars. We’ve worked on our medical debt and paid it off (minus the newer expenses when they’ve come up) and we’ve worked on our student loans and mortgage debt. Now some expenses have been added along the way due to changes in circumstances, but for the most part we’re out of the credit debt that plagued us most of our married lives. Sure we’re still working on this process and will continue to do so for some time to come.

Below I’d like to address the process for you so maybe you can follow it as well (This is from Dave Ramsey’s book The Total Money Makeover – only paraphrased with Ericisms included):

-List out your debts from smallest to largest. Work through the smallest debts first. If you have a $500 debt you pay on every month, put every extra penny you can towards that debt, while continuing to, pay the other debts down the list as you have been. All of a sudden that monthly debt will be gone, and you can put the payment you were making towards the $500 debt, plus the payment you’d been making on the next one down the list together, and you’ll see that next debt go away as well. Then when you get to the biggest one on the list you are putting the payments from all of those above it together and making huge payments on the big debt. It’s amazing how fast you can chip away at a boulder when you stop using the mini hammer and get our a sledge instead.

-Create an emergency fund. You need to start out and put at least $1000 aside in a separate account that you promise yourselves that you won’t touch without it being a huge emergency. Now that emergency isn’t running out of TP for the house; we’re talking about things like needing a new water heater, car repairs, etc. Then, when you can, you need to build that emergency fund to at least 3-4 months worth of expenses. You never know when you might lose a job, have a major medical problem, etc. It’s better to be prepared for such things.

-Pay With Cash (Or at least a debit/check card from your bank account). It’s time to get rid of the credit cards, people. Sure you just bought all that clothing for 20% off on sale at Aeropostale, but if you end up paying 15% interest on that purchase for the next year you don’t make out in the long run. Here is a rule to follow: If you don’t have the cash to buy it, then you don’t need it. It’s extremely hard, especially when all of your friends and neighbors are buying all kinds of new things all the time. Yet, if you really need it, you’ll find a way to have the cash to buy it, right? Oh, and this goes for Christmas and birthdays as well. We’ve been doing Christmas for years now totally in cash, no credit. It’s easy to do when you plan ahead. That brings up the next point:

-Budgeting. In order to really understand what you are spending money on, you need to start a budget and stick to it. In order to really know what you are spending, go ahead and spend a month or two writing down everything you spend money on (keep your receipts in a shoebox for a month or two if you have to!). Then throw it into a spreadsheet and see what kind of things you spent your money on. Then try to budget based on what you’d spent. Did you spend more than what you made last month? If you did, then you have to find places to cut. Sure it’s hard to do when gas prices change every day, but you can estimate it. The key is to make sure you don’t spend more than you make. Then you can start using cash for everything, as mentioned above. This will allow you to cut out the debt.

-Tithing. Tithing is more than giving to the church what change you have in your pocket. Tithing is giving to God what was His to begin with. If you truly trust Him, then not only will you give to God, but you’ll give to Him before you pay any other bill every month. You’ll make Him the priority and all that He is doing. When you do this not only will you be blessed for this decision, but you’ll be challenged as well. Before you started this, the enemy had control of your spending. He’s not going to like the fact that you changed the plan and gave to God. So, he’ll allow good old Murphy to come over and move into your home. You’ll have a flat tire, the washer will need a new motor, or the kids will break a window when throwing the ball in the back yard. (No experience with that one! J) Yet, if you trust God, then He'll not only fix those issues, but you’ll have money to make your budget as well. We’ve seen it time and time again in our lives, and trust me it works. God will take care of you. You just have to trust Him to do so in this area, as well as every other area of your life.

-Prayer. If you truly have given everything to God, then you have to allow Him to control your money as well, as I noted above. You have to pray about the financial decisions you are going to make. You have to pray that He controls them and that you will have the money there for whatever He wants to be doing in your life. Do you pray about your finances, thanking Him for the money you do have, and praying that He increases your territory here as well?

Those are just a few of the things that can help you with that really matters in terms of money and finances. There is so much more to discuss, but I’ve gone on enough here this week. I would encourage you to talk to me about this more, as this is probably one of my favorite areas to teach on, as you can now probably tell. I will be happy to go over budgets with you, walking alongside you on this journey if it’s something you want to start to do. Feel free to contact me any time.

Next Week: Faith Matters

Friends Matter

So for the past month we’ve been delving into a variety of topics that I feel really matter in our Christian walks, and that often don’t get talked about enough on Sundays. Today I wanted to go over friendships.

You see, strong friendships really do matter in your life, oftentimes more than we realize. First off I think that your spouse should be your best friend. If you can’t share everything in your life with that person, then you really need to work on some of the other areas we’ve already discussed. That being said, I think that a few other strong friendships in your life are equally important.

As important as your spouse is, he or she can’t always relate to everything that you have going on in your life. I know that I’ll never know what it’s like to go through childbirth, menstrual cycles, husband problems, etc. (That last one alone would be enough to drive a person completely crazy!) So having someone you can talk to about those issues who has gone through the same kind of things really does matter. They can listen to what you have to say, and possibly even give advice or at least easily relate. Talking with others who go through the same things can make it easier to go through those problems, along with many others.

Another positive of friendships are having someone else to bounce ideas off of. Be they ideas on what to buy your kids or spouse for a birthday, to thoughts on a new ministry idea, those friends can give you another point of view that can really help to developing the ideas that you have. Sometimes they’ll even come up with problems that you never saw because they can fully look at things that you might not be able to, due to the rose colored glasses you are wearing.

Another advantage of positive friendships, at least for me, is that sometimes I need adult contact that isn’t my spouse. I love Traci dearly, but I need to hang out with other guys from time to time and do guy things. Traci will watch sports with me, but it’s different going with a group of guys to a game and hashing out the latest moves the team made. Or playing a sport together with other guys and being able to compete with and against them, etc. Those are outlets for me which I need ,and I'm sure many other guys, as well as women, need them.

My last point on friendship is that you need to have friends that keep you spiritually in check. You need to have an accountability partner who isn’t your spouse that will keep you spiritually strong. They will check in with you regularly and make sure you continue to progress in your spiritual walk. They will pray with you and for you regularly. Here is the kicker, you’ll do the same for them as well. This relationship will keep your friendship strong, but also keep the relationship you have with Jesus strong, allowing you to continually model that relationship in the world.

As you can see, friendships do matter. There are a lot of things that I wasn’t able to cover here because I don’t want you to fall asleep reading this. If you want to discuss this further please contact me any time.

Next Week: Money Matters

Family Matters

So we’ve talked about marriage and how it matters. We’ve talked about parenting and how it matters. Now let’s discuss how those two things come together. To be a good, cohesive unit you have to find a way to meld your marriage to your spouse and to your parenting of your children. They aren’t separate at all in fact. Once you have kids and become parents, your marriage takes on a new form. You now have a family, and that family unit that you’ve created also needs to stay strong.

In order to have a strong family you have to spend time together. Now it’s not easy, as we’ve found out with our family. Our kids are always having practices for sports, games, or other activities they are involved with. We’re always running around, and quite often one half of the family is at one thing while the other half is at another. Because of that, we’ve found that these things matter:

Support Each Other – In order for the family to be strong, it really does matter for the family as a whole to invest time in one another. If one person has a game, for instance, the rest of the family should be there to root them on if they can be. They should do it because then when the shoe is on the other foot, it’ll be their turn to root you on. I know this doesn’t always work, but whenever it can for us it does.

Time Together – We attempt every week to spend some time together as a family. We try to play a game, watch a movie, or even go out and do something together. In the summer time we take walks or ride bikes, etc. During spring break we took mini trips to places the kids wanted to go. Those investments in the family as a whole build memories and keep the unit as a whole strong, and that really does matter.

Prayer – (Have you seen a pattern here yet?) Prayer for and with the family is important. It’s not just something you do at dinner. Pray for your family as a whole. Pray that they stay strong through the hard times, and enjoy the good times together.

Once again, there is a lot more that matters family-wise, but I’ll stop here. As always, if you’d like to discuss this more, contact me. If your family really does matter to you, then I hope I’ve helped at the least to reinforce ways to keep that family unit strong.

Next Week: Friends Matter