Financial Priorities - Next Steps

MESSAGE SUMMARY

Are your financial priorities in order? If you don’t set your financial priorities, you will never become financially flush. Most people admit they waste money and spend more than they think. Christian perspectives on money include the prosperity gospel, which is focused on using God to get material things. The poverty gospel, which believes the material world is evil, and often leads to a minimalist lifestyle. And the gratitude mindset affirms God owns everything and we simply get to steward it. Then, applying God’s financial principles to life will build wealth, and that’s not the prosperity gospel. That is a fact. Believers don’t use God to get rich, rather they steward the resources God has blessed them with. How? Live on a budget. Live on less than you make, get out of debt and save. Make living within your means a priority.

1) Can you share a nonnecessity that you spend more money on than you realize? How much per year do you think you spend on this?

2) What prevents you from making and keeping your financial priorities?

CONSIDER THIS

Once you understand that wealth and money are not evil and that everything belongs to God, it’s easier to trust God to provide for you and put his financial principles into practice.

1) Regarding Jesus Christ, the Gospel teaches us that, “God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him (John 1:3 NLT). Read 1Timothy 4:3-5 and list some principles you find regarding wealth.

2) What is wrong with the poverty gospel according to Colossians 2:20-23 (see especially verse 23)?

3) Read James 4:13-17
a. What does verse 14 tell you about your life?

b. What does verse 15 tell you about priorities?

c. What is one thing that inhibits our ability to make good financial priorities according to verse 16?

d. What does verse 17 tell you about putting off what you know you should do today?

4) Why is faith and dependence, especially in the matter of finances, so important to God according to the following?

a. Luke 16:11

b. James 1:2-4

c. Hebrews 11:1-3, 6

d. Philip. 3:7-11

5) What attitude toward finances did Jesus teach believers to have? (Matthew 6:19-21, Matthew 6:25-33) Discuss some practical ways of maintaining these attitudes?

6) What does 1 Peter 4:10 and 1 Corinthians 4:2 tell you about stewardship? How does this apply to your financial priorities?

MOVING FORWARD

Set your financial priorities today! In his booklet, Tyranny of the Urgent, Charles Hummel said, “Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important.” “We live in constant tension between the urgent and the important. The problem is that many important tasks need not be done today, or even this week … But often urgent, though less important tasks call for immediate response—endless demands pressure every waking hour.” Defeat the tyranny of the urgent and set your financial priorities this week.

1) Read Hebrews 4:16. Stop! Pray about your finances. Put all your expenses on the table and ask God for his financial priorities for you.

2) Wait for God’s instructions – Psalm 37:7.

3) Then depend on God’s power to enable you to do it. Philippians 4:13.

With God’s help, you can make financial priorities this week. Don’t delay, begin today.