Let's Talk About Money

If you happened to get the rare privilege of seeing into my mind during my childhood and teenage years, you most likely would have noticed one recurring theme: deep-seated anxiety about money.

The recurring thoughts I had mostly centered around these questions: “Why does money never last? Will I ever break free from financial lack? From where and how do rich people get so much money? etc.” In my mind, wealth seemed out of reach and was an enigma that only a select few could decipher. As I have become more mature and more intentional in my walk with God, I have come to understand that I was asking the wrong questions and leading myself down a tunnel of needless frustration and anxiety. This realization has reshaped how I now approach this topic, and I would like to share that with you. Now, before alarms start going off in your mind -- no, I will not be giving suggestions on what you should do with your actual money, that is unique to your current circumstances. Rather, I would like to offer an alternative perspective on how you should be thinking about your wealth-building journey, one grounded in Biblical principles, that you can then apply to your actual financial situation.

|To start off, I want to preface by stating that the topic of wealth-building has only been amplified in mind as I have grown and immersed myself more in God’s word.

I have been pleasantly surprised to see just how principles guiding the stewardship of resources such as money have been weaved into the fabric of scripture, and even more intrigued by how these very principles are at the core of the financial literacy franchise. A year of reading the book Proverb daily, according to the day of the month, has brought me to this conclusion: if you want to build lasting wealth, you need to have a reason more valuable and durable than the desire to simply escape your current life circumstances. Now that we’ve established the above, there are six principles that I believe should guide you as you build your wealth. I will start off by highlighting just three:

1. Knowledge, insight and understanding are much more valuable than riches 📖✨ > 💰

It is written that people who have wealth but lack knowledge and understanding perish (Psalms 49:20; Hosea 4:6). Your mind is the greatest asset you will ever have; it is the manufacturer and seat bed of ideas that can help transform your life in ways unimaginable. Hence, it is important to invest in your literacy – though it cost you all you have get understanding not only in how to acquire wealth, but in how to maintain and grow it (Proverbs 4:7). The question is not if you will ever come into an abundance of finances, that is guaranteed, for there is a season for every activity under the heavens (Ecclesiastes 3 : 1). The question you should be asking yourself is whether you will be wise and knowledgeable enough to build enduring wealth, or not.

2. Learn to lead with contentment; insatiable cravings are a bottomless pit 🕊️🤍 ⚠️🕳️

In one of his letters to Lucilius, Seneca writes “It is not the man who has little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more. [For] what difference does it make how much there is laid away in a man’s safe or in his barn… if he is always after what is another’s and only counts what he has yet to get, never what he has already” (Letters From A Stoic, page 5). I love this quote because the lack of contentment in your wealth-building journey will you make feel like you are trying to fill a bottomless pit, making it hard to appreciate incremental changes that eventually lead to great progress. Ultimately, true wealth lies in the things that cannot be seen. Financial literacy experts typically say this when referring to one’s investment and savings portfolio, which is hidden from the public eye. I fully agree with this but take it a step further and say that the truest wealth is your spiritual fortitude, “the riches that you store up in heaven” (Mathew 6:20-21), for this is the cornerstone of contentment.

When you are content, your desires become fully satisfied, and money no longer becomes the ultimate goal, but a tool to achieve even more valuable things (e.g., living a life of purpose, having the freedom to do what you want with your life). Conversely, having an insatiable appetite will cause you to tire yourself to get rich and chase after money that “will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle” (Proverbs 23: 4-5). In his book, The Psychology of Money, Housel talks extensively about the importance of defining your sense of enough, highlighting a few ultra-wealthy people who went from riches to rags all because “they had no sense of enough”(Page 40). So, above all else, guard your heart from greed, gluttony and envy, the biggest wealth destroyers.

3. Honor the Lord thy God 🙏🏽👑✝️

As you advance in your financial literacy journey, you will come to realize that there is no single “formula” that is guaranteed to make you rich. Everyone’s journey is unique, and what works for one person is not guaranteed to work for the masses. Moreover, there is no guarantee that the work you put into something will yield the results you expect. The opposite is also true, the outcome you get may exceed your expectations and hard work, far more than you can imagine. In his book, Housel writes that “every outcome in life is guided by forces other than individual effort”, urging his readers to “go out of your way to find humility when things are going right and forgiveness/ compassion when they go wrong”.

That being said, we know that “though the earth may give way, and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging, though heaven and earth pass away, God’s words will never pass away” (Psalms 46:1-3; Mathew 24:35). Therefore, when the Bible says that we should honor the Lord with our wealth and the first fruits of all our crops, and that our barns will be filled to overflowing as the result of this, we can trust that this will surely happen. When the financial literacy experts are telling us that no finance strategy or tactic is certain, how can we then invest ALL our earnings into the earthly economy? Therefore, let a portion of your earnings be set aside to honor your God (aka tithing) as it is the most secure investment you will ever make, for we know that the word of the Lord is true, upright and trustworthy, and that He is trustworthy in all that He promises. Prioritizing this principle has also re-shaped how I think about generosity, which is another key principle that I will expand on in the next post.

Thank you for reading up to this point. Stay tuned for the next post, where I will highlight the last three principles that I believe should guide you as you advance in your wealth-buidling journey. Until then stay blessed and wealthy!

References:

• Niv bible

• Seneca: Letters from a stoic

• The psychology of money (Morgan housel)