This past weekend during the message, we focused on the encounter between Jesus and Zacchaeus that takes place in Luke ch. 19. If you’d like to listen to last week’s message, you can do so here. We talked about the confessional response that Zacchaeus offers to Jesus’ invitation to visit Zacchaeus’ house and the way Jesus interprets that exchange.
Up until this moment, Zacchaeus had given his life to the accumulation of wealth, but Jesus’ invites him to give his life to something else… Just a few verses earlier, the Rich Young Ruler had walked away from Jesus’ invitation to sell his possessions and join Jesus’ group of disciples… but in this exchange, Zacchaeus dives into the deep end of Jesus’ invitation…
A miracle happens in Luke 19…
And this is how Jesus describes it:
“Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” Luke 19:9-10
The question that I wanted to leave us with was this: In what ways do you need salvation to come to your house? In other words, where might God be redirecting the “investment” you are making with your life?
I mentioned several areas that I think we need to think about, and one of them was our bank accounts…
Our church offers Financial Peace, a Christian money management course taught by Dave Ramsey. The course is based off of Dave’s book of the same name. The next session of Financial Peace will not be until next fall, but if you want to pick up a copy of the book, you can do so here. Dave teaches the “Envelope Method” of budgeting. You can read Dave’s explanation of the envelope system here.
Basically, the envelope system involves planning where you are going to spend your money before you actually spend it, and then placing the appropriate amount of money in a real or virtual envelope so you always know how much funds you have for each particular category of your budget. It’s a “proactive” approach to spending that encourages you to be really clear on how you want your money to work for you rather than spending your life working for the unwise decisions you might make with your money without the proper planning.
For many families in our church, Dave’s financial principles taught through Financial Peace have literally changed their lives and brought “salvation” to their familes. Since the #1 issue that leads many couples to divorce is money, it’s also saved countless marriages. There are few things as transformational as freeing a family from the burden of a consumer-minded lifestyle that is further complicated by the ridiculous availability of consumer credit to feed our spending addictions.
If that last sentence touches a nerve, go buy Dave’s book right now. It will change your life.
*For those who are already using the envelope system, I want to recommend mvelopes.com, an online budgeting tool which uses the Envelope method. I’ve been doing something similar to mvelopes.com for years using a very complicated Excel spreadsheet that is really cumbersome to keep up with. This system, which is fully integrated with your online banking information is a really easy way to implement a somewhat antiquated budgeting system [Dave really encourages a spending plan that is totally driven by cash rather than a debit card or credit card] in today’s world. I highly, highly recommend you checking it out if you are currently using the envelope method or are interested in trying it out.
If you have questions about mvelopes.com, feel free to shoot me an email.