Grown Up Finances

INTRO.

How much money would it take for you to feel like you were set?

What’s the number in your head where you’re like, “If I made THAT, then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything!”

Story.

[SP Note: tell a story of a person who had a lot of money that squandered it. The point of the story is to illustrate that, especially in America, we don’t have a resources problem, we have a stewardship problem.]

When I was younger, I was obsessed with the NBA, and no player captivated me more than Allen Iverson.

He revolutionized the game—rocking the first-ever shooting sleeve, showcasing perfect French braids, and dropping 30 points per game on the court.

AI was a superstar. He earned $155 million playing basketball and another $40-50 million from his Reebok shoe deal. The guy was loaded. I used to think, “If I had $200 million, I’d be set for life.”

So, imagine my shock when I learned AI told a judge he couldn’t pay an $860,000 jewelry debt.

$860,000. On 

$860,000. On jewelry.

Turns out, $200 million wasn’t enough for AI.

TENSION.

There are all kinds of stories of people who have a TON of money, more money than I would know what to do with, who end up going broke.

And the question I always find myself asking when I hear those stories is: how does that happen?

I think those stories tell us something about the the culture that all of us are growing up in here in America: we are bad with money!

Our country has the largest gross domestic product in the world at $27.72 TRILLION.

The average household in our country makes $80,610.

Clearly, we’re not bad at making money.

And yet, our country also has the largest national debt in the world at $30.89 TRILLION.

The average household has $22,173 in debt.

We’re not bad at making money, but we are bad with money.

And that’s why tonight, we’re going to finish our series, When I Grow Up, by talking about financial maturity. Remember, this whole series is about one thought: God wants to grow us up in every area. Whether it’s our emotions, our relationships, or our finances, God’s goal is to grow us up and He has a framework for how He does it.

Anyone remember the framework of how God grows us up?

Immaturity (others are responsible for me) Adulthood (I am responsible for myself) Maturity (I am responsible for others)

We’re going to use the same framework tonight, but we’re going to look at it through the lens of finances and see what it would look like for us to become financially mature.

It may seem like a weird thing to talk about with students, but we need to learn how to grow up in this area, because if we do, I believe it would make the single greatest measurable difference in our world.

Now before we jump in, I want to help us understand one thing: I’m going to talk about financial maturity. So, I’m going to use the language of money quite a bit. And that may feel like it doesn’t apply to you, especially if you don’t make your own money yet. What I want you to understand is that money is a resource. So, this conversation is about money, but more than that, it’s about how to steward the resources that God has given us. And even if money isn’t your primary resource right now, you do have resources that you are responsible to steward like your time, your energy, your mind, and your talent. Learning how to steward the resources you have now is a translatable skill that will help you steward other resources that you may have later.

Make sense?

TRUTH.

Open your Bibles to 1 Timothy 5:8.

This book is a letter from pastor Paul to a younger pastor that he trained up, Timothy. Timothy was the pastor at a church in the city of Ephesus, he was having a hard time helping his church grow up in their faith. So, as an older pastor, Paul wrote this letter to give Timothy some instruction on some specific situations that he was dealing with that would help his church grow up.

Here’s what Paul said in 1 Timothy 5:3-4, 8

3 Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need. 4 But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God…

8 Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

So one of the places Timothy’s church needed to grow up was in their care for marginalized and disadvantaged people in their church. At that time, one of the MOST marginalized groups of people in the church were widows.

It was a male-dominant culture. Women were very limited in the work that they could do and how influential they could become in that society. So, if a woman’s husband died, she lost her way of making an income and didn’t have government assistance or something like life insurance to help her out.

And so, the church was doing what I think we all would agree the church should do: using their resources to take care of those who didn’t have resources.

And Paul is explaining to Timothy, make sure you’re on the lookout for widows who really do need the church’s help. But then he gives an interesting qualification for what kinds of widows qualify: it’s those who don’t have any immediate family that can take care of them first.

The church’s role, according to Paul, is to be the second line of defense for any widow who doesn’t have the first line of defense – their family.

That introduces an interesting idea: God wants to bless the world through people.

That’s fascinating.

We have so many government assistance programs and church ministries that it often feels like the care of those who can’t care for themselves is the primary responsibility of a government, an organization, or a church. But that’s not how God designed it according to Paul.

It’s people.

So, what does that have to do with financial maturity?

Well first, it helps us define what financial maturity looks like to God.

Financial maturity is God’s process of growing me from being a financial burden to a financial blessing.

Now let’s look at that definition of financial maturity through God’s framework for growing us up:

Financial immaturity (others are financially responsible for me) -> Financial Adulthood (I am financially responsible for myself) -> Financial Maturity (I am financially responsible for myself and have margin to bless others).

Now, remember, Timothy was sent to the church in Ephesus to deal with some false teaching and immature thinking. The fact that Paul had to specifically write this in 5:8 means there were widows in that church that God wanted to bless who weren’t receiving what God wanted to give them.

Now the text doesn’t explicitly say why, but based on patterns of human behavior, I think we can safely assume 1 of 2 things were happening:

The people in Ephesus had reached financial adulthood, but not financial maturity. They didn’t think they had a responsibility to bless the people around them. They thought their money was just for them. In other words, they had fallen into immature thinking.

The people in Ephesus hadn’t stewarded their finances well and so they didn’t have margin to bless others. They used the money God had given them to indulge themselves instead of blessing others. In other words, they had fallen into immature living.

APPLICATION.

And so, here’s the question: is any of that immature thinking or immature living that was true in Ephesus true of our church here in Georgia?

And if it is, what would mature thinking and mature living look like instead?

Let’s start with immature thinking. All of us, me included, live in a HGHLY individualistic culture. Our default setting is to think that we are more independent than we really are.

So, when it comes to our money, the goal that is often painted for us is become financially independent. In God’s framework for growing us up, the goal that often preached in our culture is financial adulthood.

It’s not a bad thing to grow into financial adulthood. In fact, I think it’s a natural part of God’s process as you grow up. Financial adulthood isn’t a bad thing, it’s just not the ultimate thing. The money (or resources) that God gives each of us isn’t just for us. God wants to bless the world through people – through YOU.

Your money isn’t just for you.

And just like the church in Ephesus, we are robbing someone of care when we are careless with our responsibility to be a blessing.

Let’s move to immature living.

Not only do all of us live in a highly individualistic culture that normalizes being more individualistic than God made us to be, but we also live in a culture that normalizes debt.

And look, I’m not going to make some blanket statement that all debt is bad and you shouldn’t do it. There are moments where taking on a calculated risk of debt is the right move. But almost always, that kind of debt isn’t consumer debt.

Consumer debt is just the inability to tell yourself no. It’s the misuse of the money that God gave you for the purpose of blessing others to instead indulge yourself.

Pastor Preston Morrison says it this way and I’m always so convicted by it,

“Debt is me trying to live a life that God hasn’t given me.”

God wants to bless the world through you! There’s good news and bad news to that.

Let’s start with the bad news: You can shrink the size of God’s blessing through you by being a bad steward of what God has given you.

The truth is, either way some of the money God has given me is going to somebody. But when I go into unnecessary debt, that money God has given me is going to somebody that God didn’t tell me to give it to.

That’s the bad news.

The good news: You can compound the size of God’s blessing through you by being a good steward of what God gave you. And good stewardship over time makes a BIG impact. Let me show you.

Ramsey Study.

In 2019, there was a survey called the National Study of Millionaires which surveyed 10,000 people who had a net worth of $1 million. In the survey, each person was asked what they did for a living.

If you had to guess, what do you think were some of the top 5 professions of the millionaires they surveyed?

Do you know what the #3 profession among the millionaires they surveyed was?

School Teacher…

Do you know what the national average salary is for a school teacher?

$69, 597.

That’s $11,000 LESS than the average household income.

How does that happen?

It’s certainly NOT because they made a huge salary. In fact, only 31% of the PEOPLE surveyed averaged $100,000 a year during their career. The reason that so many teachers became millionaires was because they started saving consistently early in their career and their savings compounded over time.

Good stewardship over time makes a BIG impact.

Which means, how you steward what you have right now matters.

Earlier I said that, if we grew up in this area, I felt like it would make the biggest measurable difference in the world. The reason I said that is because I believe that good stewardship is a form of social justice.

CLOSE.

The youngest person in here right now is probably 14 years old. So let’s take a second and picture Gwinnett county 20 years from now in 2045. That would make the youngest person in here 34 years old. By that point, you’re well into adulthood and aren’t just stewarding time, energy, and talent, you’re also stewarding money and influence.

Imagine if the 1500-2000 students started to grow up into financial maturity and understood that God wanted to use them to bless the world around them and spent the last 20 years creating margin to have the means to bless others when they needed it.

What if in 2045 the foster care system had to put new families on a waitlist because we had 2000+ families who had financial margin to be able to care for another kid who didn’t have a family of their own who could care for them?

What if food insecurity no longer existed in our county because the families of our church had created financial margin to cover their family’s meals plus the meals of kids who couldn’t pay for their own?

What if everyone in our county had a place to live because the families of our church understood that their spare bedroom at their house or apartment wasn’t just for them but could be used to house someone who needed a place to stay?

What every single mom in our county didn’t have to worry about the financial pressure of having a new baby because the families of our church had financial margin to look at their baby registry and say, “we’re taking care of all of that. You don’t need to worry about it.”

What if every addict in our county who wanted to get clean could go to rehab and get the help they needed because the families of our church had financial margin to send them?

Good stewardship is a form of social justice. Imagine how God could bless a county through 1500-2000 families who understood that the money God gave them wasn’t just for them and live in a way that created margin for them to actually do something when they saw a need.

Now trace that back. Good stewardship THEN can only happen by practicing good stewardship NOW.

So how are you stewarding what you have NOW to prepare for what God might want to do THEN?

It doesn’t have to be crazy. What if there wasn’t a single parent of a student who attended WEDNESDAYS that did their family’s laundry anymore because, as a student, you stewarded your extra time and energy to take one extra chore off your parent’s plate?

God wants to bless the world through YOU. And He isn’t waiting to do it until you grow up, have a family and get a job. He’s ready to use you to bless the world around you right now.

What can you do now to grow up and be a blessing to the people around you?

Let’s pray.