From the category archives:

Money

Hanukkah Hams – Show Me the Money Edition

by Andy Wood on November 13, 2008

in Consumers,Gamblers,Insight,Life Currency,LV Alter-egos,Money

Okay, all you fans of the amazing possibilities of humans left to their own ideas, it’s time for another edition of Hanukkah Hams!  In case you missed previous episodes, a Hanukkah Ham was named after this, uh, “creative” marketing idea last year.

With all the gloom, doom, and sleepless nights about the economy, I thought maybe we could use a little financial inspiration.

Couldn’t find any, so this is what you get instead…

One of the fundamental truths of the New Testament is that money is “coined personality.”  That is, people can see the “real you” in the ways you respond to and handle money.  If you’re generous with your finances, you’ll be generous with other parts of your life as well.  Same is true if you’re careless, stingy, unorganized, etc.  This raises some interesting questions about some or organizations.  If money is coined personality, we may have a few problems!

A couple of years ago, I walked into a local bank, started writing a check, and told the teller in my best deadpan voice that I needed $30 worth of Federal Reserve notes.  He actually asked another teller, “Do we have Federal Reserve notes here?”  “Ya mean, money?” she asked.

Last month a man in Warren, Michigan figured the best way to get a little extra cash for the holidays was to strong arm somebody and steal theirs. [click to continue…]

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Building Wealth in the Land of the Clowns

by Andy Wood on November 6, 2008

in Five LV Laws,Life Currency,Money,Principle of Abundance

Isn’t it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.

Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can’t move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.
-from “Send in the Clowns”

No, that’s not the theme song to the next installment of the U.S. Congress.  Then again…

Yesterday I introduced you to a group of Christ followers who were living in a world of mirrors.  The good people of Laodicea were living with the bling, but God had a different estimate of their true wealth.  And in His correction, He revealed some things about a completely different economy that is in operation all around us.  For review, here are the principles we looked at yesterday:

Principle #1:  The root nature of sin is a declaration of independence from God.

Principle #2:  God has a system of economy unlike the world’s system.

Principle #3:  “Economy” is the exchange of all the commodities of life.

Principle #4:  Money has a unique place in the commodities of life.

Principle #5:  It is possible to be rich in the world’s economy and bankrupt in God’s.

So here the scenery changes, and God has some encouraging things to say to His loveable losers: [click to continue…]

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God Has an Economy, and You CAN Be Rich In It

by Andy Wood on November 5, 2008

in Five LV Laws,Life Currency,Money,Principle of Abundance

It was the Beverly Hills of ancient Asia.  A center of wealth and high-end commerce.  A medical haven, where people came from miles around for treatment of various ailments.  If you wrote your mama and told her your job was transferring you there, she’d have something to brag about the next day.  This was some place.  And there was a church in town.

How would you like to get a personal letter from Jesus Christ, where the first thing he said was, “I know what you’ve been doing”?  That can be a little unnerving!  But that’s exactly what Jesus said to the First Church of Coolville, alias Laodicea.  He had a few other things to say as well.  Let’s peek at their mail:

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see (Revelation 3:15-18).

Looks like the guys and dolls in Lala Land had a few things to learn about wealth.

So do we.

They thought they were loaded; Jesus said otherwise.  Remember, though, that in spite of its scathing message, this was a love letter.  And in his love, Jesus gave them, and LifeVestors everywhere, a few pointers on His economy. [click to continue…]

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Eight Ways to Rebuild Your Gaps

by Andy Wood on October 28, 2008

in Ability,Allocating Your Resources,Consumers,Enlarging Your Capacity,Insight,Life Currency,LV Alter-egos,LV Cycle,Money,Pleasers,Time

Here’s a little exercise we actually take worship service time to practice occasionally.  Follow the instructions carefully (yes, I mean I want you to actually do this):

  • Take a deep breath
  • Let out half of it.
  • Hold
  • Smile
  • Repeat the following out loud, in a calm soothing voice:

“No.”

Repeat this exercise regularly, just for practice, and as needed in live game situations.

Not, “No because…”

Not, “Maybe later…”

Not, “Let me pray about it…”

Certainly not, “See if you can find somebody else, and if you can’t, I’ll see what I can do.”

Learning to graciously, kindly refuse is one of eight steps to building or rebuilding margin in your life.  Margin has to do with creating gaps – cushions of time, money, energy, or spiritual strength that act as living shock absorbers for those who have them.

Imagine how it could revolutionize your attitude, relationships, productivity, and health if the next time somebody says, “Got a minute?” you actually do! [click to continue…]

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How to Burn Yourself Out in Three Quick and Easy Steps

by Andy Wood on October 27, 2008

in Ability,Consumers,Life Currency,LV Alter-egos,Money,Pleasers,Time

We pass a word around our office that my associate once used to describe me, and it stuck:  Crispy.

He used it a few years ago when he and our office manager decided they’d seen enough of me in the state I was in and informed me that I was taking my wife on an R & R trip to the mountains.  My reservations had been made, and they weren’t taking “no” for an answer.

I hope to God you have somebody who looks out for you like that.  I wasn’t aware of how emotionally and physically fried I was.  The sad truth about stress, crispiness, and burnout is that often others see their effects on us before we do.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve been crispy, and it probably won’t be the last.  But there’s a further step that can be devastating.  Burnout, in a clinical sense, means you have completely exhausted every form of energy necessary to continue.  More than just losing interest (“I’m sort of burned out on jazz these days”), I’m talking about those times people go to their wells and find them completely dry.  Times when people shock those who know them best by walking away from relationships, careers, or wisdom.

“Stress makes people stupid,” a management consultant once told Daniel Goldman. Burnout reveals it to the world.

So how do people get in such a state – past stress, past crispy, all the way to emotionally nuked?  Let me suggest three quick and easy recipes for complete emotional, mental, or spiritual exhaustion: [click to continue…]

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The Leaking Economy

by Andy Wood on October 1, 2008

in Allocating Your Resources,Consumers,Five LV Laws,Life Currency,LV Alter-egos,LV Cycle,Money,Principle of Eternity

What do you do when you’ve done what you know to do, and what you know to do isn’t working this time?  How do you explain the fact that time-tested methods for producing results, solving problems, and getting ahead just aren’t working this time?  How do you plug the leaks in your economic life?

Questions like these are front and center among politicians, economists, investors, and families these days.

The problem isn’t a shortage of solutions.  The problem is that that the solutions we know are supposed to work aren’t working.

We’re like a wad of sailors on a stormy sea, who keep running to opposite sides of a ship to steady it in the waves – while all the while, the hull is leaking.  I’ve seen it at kitchen tables; I’ve seen it at capital buildings.  Everything we do to steady the ship just draws in more water, and sailing has turned to bailing.

I wonder if anybody is asking – really asking – God.

(Aw, what does HE know?)

Plenty, it would appear.  This isn’t the first time politicians and businesspeople confronted a leaky economy. [click to continue…]

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Seven Keys to Standing When the Nations are Shaking

by Andy Wood on September 25, 2008

in Consumers,Five LV Laws,Life Currency,Love,LV Alter-egos,Money,Principle of Abundance,Principle of Freedom

This site is nearly a year old, and I have never written a post I am more serious or urgent about.

There are times when our spirits and/or minds are unusually drawn in certain directions.  Ideas and concepts leap off the pages of the Bible.  Words or names get planted in our consciousness and never seem to go away.  These times, I believe, are no coincidence.  They are times in which the Holy Spirit is bringing grounded biblical truth to bear on current experience.

Simply put, He’s speaking.

I don’t have experiences like this tremendously often, which makes the times I do have them all the more compelling.  What I am about to share grew out of such a time.

As I mentioned earlier , I believe we are entering a season that for many people will be a season of restoration and change worldwide.

We are also living in tense, fearful days.  I called a banker friend yesterday and asked him, in the words of an old Randy Stonehill song, if we should go back to trading seashells and just admit we’re broke.  (He was encouraging.  But then, he’s a banker.)

I also spoke about this Sunday (Listen Here) that these are days in which anything that can be shaken will be.  God is shaking the wealth of the nations.  People are afraid.

How do we stand strong when we’re living somewhere between the faith and the fear?  How can we be in a place where we see the joy beyond what we endure?  How can we allow the Holy Spirit to shake the barnacles off of us and prepare us for a “latter glory” that will come?  How can we be lights in a world of confusion and darkness?

Sparing you the details of how I got there, there are seven things we must do, and do quickly: [click to continue…]

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The One Question that Determines Your Freedom or Bondage

by Andy Wood on August 13, 2008

in Five LV Laws,Life Currency,Money,Principle of Freedom

So how’d the reaping go yesterday?  How many times did you find yourself “serving” or servicing a decision you had made days, weeks or months earlier?  OR, how many times did you find yourself being served by the good consequences of a decision?

I just got an email about yet another family that has been ripped apart because of a series of addictive choices by a husband/father.  That makes five I’ve dealt with the last couple of weeks.  The hopeful news is, this man’s past does not dictate his future.  But it certainly has determined his present.

Meanwhile, in “Finantasy Land,” you don’t hear much talk about financial freedom these days.  Other than economic politics, about the only thing you hear is, “Hey, good news!  They’re having a sale at the gas station.  Unleaded is down to $3.56 a gallon!”  But I digress….

Wouldn’t it be good to know that you could simply, decisively establish a course that will add value to your future, either here, there, or in the air?  What if there was a way to cut through the clutter and confusion, the knee-jerk pleasure seeking and sidewalk philosophy, and find a True North – a pathway that actually leads to a future of freedom?

There may be.
[click to continue…]

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The Estate Sale

by Andy Wood on July 11, 2008

in Consumers,Life Currency,LV Alter-egos,Money

Estate SaleI have eye-opening experiences in odd places.  I want to tell you about one that took place a few years ago at a house on 80th Street in Lubbock, a few houses away from where we used to live.  Our former neighbors were having an estate sale, and I have to confess, I’m a sucker.  So I strolled down to take it all in.  The sale was professionally managed, well organized, and quite thorough.  They were selling what appeared to be everything that wasn’t bolted to the walls or floor.

Like most estate sales, this was a trip back in time.  And somewhere amid the 8-track tapes, 70s-era stereo, and the costume jewelry, it happened.  Somewhere in my own mind, I was standing in the middle of my own estate sale.  Watching crowds of strangers pick over my treasures that, over the years, I had spent tens of thousands of dollars on.  Seeing them bargain with somebody over curtains or books or something – for dimes on the dollar, of course.  “Dear God,” I half-exclaimed and half-prayed, “tell me there’s more to my life than old stuff to be bartered over!”

As I continued to wander through the house, I could identify with the fun and excitement of this family as they had purchased that new appliance, received that special Christmas gift, or took advantage of those today-only prices and sales.  In so many ways, this was a typical American family.  Nice house.  Nice stuff, albeit touched by time.  And now all of it was being left behind.

It’s bad etiquette, I suppose, to actually ask about the people whose possessions we’re pilfering through.  Are they still living?  Do they have family?  Could I be standing next to their daughter or niece?  But I couldn’t help but wonder.  As I stood in what once was their home, I felt sure I was looking at a poor reflection of who these people really were.

[click to continue…]

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Oh, Those Golden Lippers

by Andy Wood on July 10, 2008

in Consumers,Five LV Laws,Life Currency,LV Alter-egos,Money,Principle of Abundance,Tense Truths

RollsTense Truth:  God has established clearly-defined principles of life management that can make me prosper, and my tomorrow better than today.  Yet for his own good purposes, God will allow me to suffer in order to further the gospel, transform my character, and mature my faith. Regardless of the what the circumstances of the moment suggest, God is for me, and will reward faithfulness, to some degree in this life, and to a much greater degree in the next.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Mention the word “prosperity” to American Evangelical Christians and you’ll get one of two responses.  The first is a kind of entranced smile – a brightened countenance very similar to the sheer delight we used to see from people at an Amway meeting.

The second is that uncomfortable, “what do you mean by that?” kind of look, suggesting that money is the world’s curse, and that people who have it must be materialistic swine or should somehow apologize or feel guilty.

So which are you?  “Amen?”  Or “Oh me?”  Or maybe, like me, you vacillate from one to the other.

The challenge with all this is that the Bible categorically promises success to people who live according to principles or laws that God has established.  “Everything he does will prosper,” the psalmist said in Psalm 1.  And check out those blessings mentioned by Moses in Deuteronomy.

That said, the Bible also deals with the apparent contradiction of that – the prosperity of the wicked.  Those mirroring psalms – 37 and 73 – both deal with that.  The wicked does have his day, the psalmist concludes, but God has a way of sorting things out in the end, when it matters most.

Meanwhile, in the New Testament, Jesus didn’t promise a life without tribulation.  On the contrary, He said we would have it, despite what people uniquely in America sometimes promise.  Our rewards are presented mostly as heavenly, post-life promises.  But even in places, such as here, there is the declaration that God has obligated Himself to meet all our needs.

So which is it?  Suffering in this age, followed by our eternal treasure in heaven?  Or timeless principles that work in the age to come, but also may be claimed, believed, and acted on here?

Yes.

Does God want you and me to be rich?

[click to continue…]

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