A couple of years ago I hosted a Wealth Creation Weekend with hundreds in attendance. We had people attending from inside and outside the United States, including regular working people, businessmen and women, entrepreneurs, and even a contingent of professionals and executive from a large corporation.
The interesting thing is this: the professionals, though earning over $300,000 a year, were broke. An attendee earning only $30,000 a year was wealthier by far than the professionals and executives. You see, income is just a small part of the wealth picture.
Another man in his forties told me he had earned over $2.1 million in his lifetime and has nothing to show for it. That’s tragic.
Many Christians believe it’s impolite to talk about money, and many believe that God’s will is for some to be poor and others to be rich.
An article recently appeared in the Washington Post that criticized the wealthy, suggesting that when a person gets rich, he does so at the expense of someone else. It’s as if the rich cause poverty. Nonesense!
I find it sad that many followers of Jesus have never taken the time to rewrite their thinking according to God’s thinking on the subject of wealth.
There is a theology of wealth—what God says and thinks about it. There is a psychology of wealth which involves the way we think about money, talk about money and feel about money. And there is a series of actions that begin the wealth process in our lives.
In Deuteronomy 8:18, we are told that God has given us the POWER to get wealth. Ephesians 3:20 tells us that power is in us when we know Jesus Christ.
What we do with that power is up to us.
The man earning $30,000 a year not only tithed to the Lord but gave offerings and more, activating the power inside him. But he also planted personal seeds in his investment accounts, which God calls “storehouses,” even though it meant living below his means. The professionals and executives, earning over $300,000 a year spent everything, lived beyond their income and had much of their wealth going down a swirling dark hole of debt.
I’ve said before, that only a handful of believers will come into this revelation, and fewer still will practice the actions necessary to come into the Wealthy Place. The average rate of savings in the United States is only ½%. That means that out of 325,000,000 people in America, only 1,625,000 (about 1 out of 200 people save anything.) 20% of Americans (1 out of 5) spend more than they earn, using credit cards and getting loans on things that will strangle them financially and sabotage their future.
Without realizing it, many are unconsciously choosing a life without wealth because of their faulty beliefs about money. Our money beliefs and thoughts create artificial boundaries to our wealth.
If you want to stretch your financial boundary upward, you must step out of your comfort zone and change your false beliefs about money and replace them with the truth of God’s Word.
Here are some things you can start now to change your artificial wealth boundary:
- Read a chapter in Proverbs every day
- Invest in your wealth education (seminars, books, audios, videos)
- Plant two kinds of seeds (first in God’s Kingdom; second, in your future). Set up a storehouse account (savings to start with, then investment accounts, and add systematically and regularly without fail.)
- Live below your means so you’ll have something to invest for your future. Most people have interest working against them by living in debt. It’s better to have interest working FOR you in an investment account.
- Step out of your comfort zone. Now Imagine: How would you handle being in a room full of millionaires and multi-millionaires? How would you think? How would you feel? What would be your comfort level?
- Thank God daily for His wonderful gift of the power to get wealth
- Eliminate the victim mentality, the entitlement mentality, and the scarcity mentality. Change your thoughts to thoughts of abundance and increase.
- Begin reading Veranda magazine, Architectural Digest, and other magazines that inspire you to reach higher.
These are just a few suggestions I offer in my Wealthy Place Seminars and Club 52 events. If you begin now, I know that with time and consistency, you’ll be in the upper 4% financially. I really believe that.
Yes I had a wonderful start saving etc but I infested a home paid it off with 401 k used all I had shared land that I thought was going to partly mine and my husband with his sister now I had to write it off to her and I moved back to in.so that was a bad choice now we are living with daughter on disability and I’m on-site.so please any prayers would be delighted thank you Mrs.Debra Crittendon
So happy you are going to EMU!!
Hugs from Argentina
Thanks Benjamin! Looking forward to it!
Great article. Thank you very much for always giving us sound teaching!
Thanks for all you do for the Kingdom, Randy.
This is a wonderful article for me. Thanks Dave. Your teachings have been a blessing to me