Simplify Your Life: Manage Your Money God’s Way

God has entrusted every person with three primary resources—time, money, and relationships. How we manage these resources determines not only our quality of living, but also whether or not we fulfill God’s highest plan for our lives. We’ve recently talked about managing our time, so I’d now like to focus on managing our material resource, which is better known as money.

Time Management, Part 2

Stephen Covey once said, “The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.”

So many people let time slip by them without a purpose or plan behind how they have spent it, yet God tells us in His Word that we are to redeem the time we have been given. In my last magazine article, I shared with you three keys to the first stage in time management. Now I want to show you the second phase: implementation.

Once you have a well-prioritized plan, you must implement it. The first major contributor to successful implementation is to be single-minded in your pursuit of it. You can’t allow yourself to be distracted. You need to be absolutely determined to accomplish that which you have planned to do and allow no interruptions or detours to get you off course. As James 1:8 says, “A double minded man is unstable in all of his ways.”

Double mindedness produces instability. It’s impossible to hold your course and fulfill God’s plan for your life when you are in a condition of instability. You must remain single-minded.

For many of us, staying focused in the midst of the distractions that bombard us every day is a big challenge. You need to recognize distractions for what they are: they are interruptions with the potential to get you off course.

How We Learn God’s Will

Did you know that you can pray in tongues and receive understanding about your future? As we pointed out earlier, every time you pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit is praying through you the perfect will of God, sometimes for other people, often for your own life.  It is the Holy Spirit’s job to reveal God’s will to you for your life as you do so.

“Why can’t God just send some preacher to me who will tell me God’s will?”

Look at 1 Corinthians 2:8.

Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (KJV)

If the enemy would have known what God had planned for the future, he would have never crucified Jesus. The implication is the same for you. If the enemy knew God’s plan for your life, he would put up roadblocks and try to stop what God wanted to do. That’s why God is going to reveal His will to you this way. He will give you the interpretation of what the Spirit is praying about so you can get glimpses of His will and begin building images of your future on the basis of that revealed will.

Generate Momentum Toward His Will

If you love the Lord, God has prepared some wonderful things for you that eye hasn’t seen and ear hasn’t heard, and these are the things God wants you to generate momentum toward in your life. Look at 1 Corinthians 2:9–10.

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. (KJV)

The Bible is the will of God for all believers of all ages. It reveals His general will for us, but everybody is a unique creation and God also has a unique plan for you as an individual. The specifics of His will—where to live, your ministry and vocational pursuits, who to marry, etc.—are revealed to you by the Holy Spirit. Both His general and specific will are things we want to build momentum toward in our lives.

Self-Talk Is in the Word

In my most recent magazine article, Faith and Healing: When Self-Talk Can Be Good, I talked about a principle that the woman with the issue of blood employed when she received her healing from Jesus.

And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: for she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour. (Matthew 9:20–21 KJV)

The key to this woman’s healing is in this phrase: “for she said within herself.” She wasn’t talking to the crowds or her friends or her family. She wasn’t talking to the unseen realm. She was talking to herself. Whether or not she realized it, she was employing the spiritual principle of self-talk.

Are the Miracles in the Bible Real?

Did you know that the walls falling down in Jericho is a historically verifiable truth? This isn’t some kind of fantasy conjured up by religionists over the years. Archaeologists discovered that in 1456 B.C. a catastrophic event hit the city of Jericho and the city walls came down.

Now, archaeologists call this “event” an earthquake, but that makes it no less of a miracle.