Hurry Up God, You're Way Too Slow!

Like everyone else in the world, I dream of things that I would like to acquire some day. As time progresses, I realize that the day that I can fulfill one of my desires is slowly approaching. I have for years dreamed of having a pontoon party boat that we could go out on to have a good time with family and/or friends. I have been waiting many years for that dream to come to fruition and I still have a few more years to wait. Although my income is now 5 1/2 times what it was when Karen and I first got married, we still have decided to show self control by putting money away for retirement and paying off all our long-term debt as quickly as possible (which is only our mortgage now).

I wish I could say that showing self-control were easy for me but it is something that I had to learn the hard way. When I was young and dumb, I had many thousands of dollars of credit card debts and automobile loans and quickly found myself over extended. Needless to say, my credit score took a sharp nose dive and I couldn't get a loan back then to buy a candy bar in a grocery store. When Karen and I got married, I brought the extra baggage of debt into the marriage with me. Through hard work and perseverance, we paid off my debt and haven't made the same mistakes again. I guess that is why I can be tolerant of young people who make stupid mistakes because I was one at one time. About three weeks ago I received a call from the bank manager at the bank which Karen and I use. She had run my credit score and we were 11 points away from having perfect credit. She stated it was the highest score she had ever seen in her banking career. God blessed our endeavors and helped us repair the damage that I had done.

Over the years I have seen so many examples of foolish people doing foolish things. To be fair though, I have seen one great example of a man of God who took a stand to trust God to finance his church's building program and he has stood by the promise that he made to God. Here is that great example:

Over 10 years ago, Karen and I went to a large church in Fort Smith Arkansas. The pastor at this church of over 1300 members felt that God wanted them to expand their facilities so they could serve more people in the community. The church was already serving several hundred inner-city children every week and this pastor felt God wanted them to expand to serve even more families. However, the pastor knew that God wanted them to do it debt free and that they needed to raise the money so they wouldn't have to borrow it. You see, this pastor understood that although the Bible doesn't say that borrowing money is a sin, it does state that borrowing money is unwise. Proverbs 22:7 states, "The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender." It has been over 10 years, and this church still continues to raise the money for their building program and GOD HAS BLESSED THEM.

This is one example of a true man of God who has followed through on his commitment to allow God to provide the funding for God's expansion program. Unfortunately, most of us only hear about those men of God who may not have been so wise in their fund raising efforts because they tried to trump God and use debt as a means to fund their expansion program. Did you catch that? In one instance I said "God's" expansion program and in the other I said "their" expansion program. You see, when God is in it, God has the ability to finance any expansion program. He just does it in his own timing. We have many great examples of this. When God wanted his people to build a tabernacle, Moses put the word out that resources were needed and the people gave. No debt financing was necessary. When Solomon wanted to build God's temple, he used the resources that God had already provided through the King's treasury. No debt financing was necessary. That is where we go wrong when we try to trump God.

So when is borrowing money a sin? At this point I am going to give my opinion. I believe that debt becomes a sin when we allow it to go beyond providing for our basal requirements (shelter, food, clothing, etc) to providing ourselves with luxuries if it binds our finances so strongly that we are ineffective in helping others with their basal requirements. In other words, if we are so strapped for cash because we bought luxury items for ourselves (or family) that we are unable to help others who really need it, then it is a sin. The other time I believe it is a sin is when we are inpatient in waiting for God to provide and we decide to take matters into our own hands. Then it is a sin because it is a condition of the heart. Either we didn't trust God to provide or we decided that his timing didn't meet our demands and we decided to change the timeline to meet what we wanted. In essence, we are saying, "hurry up God, you're way too slow!" 

What it really boils down to is that Karen and I are only truly responsible for how we handle our family's finances and the training we give our children in how they should handle their finances. However,  I also think that since God has allowed us to learn some valuable lessons through our experiences we should share those experiences in order to help others.