Tag: balance

Living Intentionally

Part of my Life Group, meeting at my house.

I just finished reading Francis Chan’s bestselling book, Crazy Love, as part of my adoption focused Life Group, 1:17. Crazy Love touched upon very similar themes as the last few books we’ve read as a group, The Hole In The Gospel, Fields of the Fatherless, and Radical. The premise of ALL these books is that if you say you love and follow Jesus, how can you NOT live compassionately, sacrificially, and missonally. If you truly love Jesus you have got to take what He says to heart about caring for the poor and oppressed and not living for our own comfort and safety.

It’s so very ironic and utlimately counter-cultural to our cozy, comfortable version of Americanized Christianity. Sure we go to church, we go to Bible studies, we pray, we learn how we’re supposed to love our enemies. But somehow we completely ignore the kind of faith Jesus calls us to, the kind of trust that he demanded of his disciples, and the cost of following Him. We want to make Christianity seem easy and appealing to the masses but the reality is that Jesus calls us to anything but an easy life full of blessings. When He said that He came so that we might know “life abundantly” He did not mean a healthy happy family in a big house in suburbia and retirement in a beach house somewhere. Read the gospels straight through and that’s pretty obvious. Fulfillment comes when we are find our calling and answer it, serving others without concern for ourselves keeping our goal on bringing glory to His name.

On Monday night at our Life Group meeting we talked about what living like that looks like. It doesn’t necessarily mean selling our big houses and living with the poor, ala Shane Claiborne…although that MIGHT be it for some of us. It doesn’t necessarily mean moving to China or Indonesia to bring the forbidden word of God to the Muslims or Buddhists…although that MIGHT be it too and we ought not write it off too quickly.

What it does come down to though, is living intentionally. Living every day with the mission of Jesus to love and serve the least in mind. Greeting and treating EVERY person you come across as if you were speaking with Jesus Himself. Going out of our way to serve people that most of society totally overlooks.

This whole entire blog is about living intentionally, when it comes down to it. If you read my About Me page and my elevator pitch you’ll see that. But I’m still trying to figure out where God is calling me and what MORE I can do. I’ve done a whole lot of shifting of my purchasing and budgeting to be able to serve with my finances, but it doesn’t feel like enough to me at all. I could write checks to give 90% of my income away and it would still feel like not enough to me, because my time and talents are more valuable than my money.

All I know is that living intentionally is about lining up your daily actions with your values system and it creates a life that is wholly stress-free and fulfilling. Annie Dillard wrote “the way we live our days is the way we will live our lives” and I couldn’t agree more.

Whatever you do, don’t let life just happen to you. Make small changes to be proactive. Get yourself off of auto-pilot. You’ll be eternally grateful. It’s so worth it.

Financial Peace Works for Me

This fall my husband I decided to sign up for a class offered at our church called Financial Peace University. I kind of already thought we had financial peace, since we have no consumer debt other than a small car loan, and we invest heavily in our retirement and kids’ college education funds. But we have never lived on a budget and according to my husband, our spending (after retirement and education savings) was beginning to slightly exceed our income.  So our rainy day savings were starting to drop, and we weren’t really fully tithing as we had in the past and intended to be. Mike, being the security obsessed guy he is, started to get anxious about the patterns. I really just wanted to sit through the class because I love personal finance and write about it here a fair amount.

Financial Peace U. is a nationally available class created and taught by Dave Ramsey in a small group setting with a class facilitator. Our particular class leader happens to be a financial planner who has been teaching the class at our church for years, and has tons of firsthand experience helping lots people get out from under their debt. At the beginning of the class we all wrote down our total consumer debt on a slip of paper and put it in a jar. Our class has somewhere around 30 people in it, and the total debt for the class was astronomical, averaging over 25K per person in the class. That kind of shocked me, but I guess it is consistent with what I’ve read or seen in TV reports. Still, we live in an extremely well educated, upper middle class suburb. I know, I know…that doesn’t mean people are good with their money.

works for me wednesday at we are that familyWe are six weeks into the class and I have to say it is awesome.  The videos with Dave Ramsey are absolutely hilarious and packed with great information. We sat down for the first time and created a very detailed zero sum budget, allocating every single dollar we have to something. Mike’s goal is to increase our emergency fund to a level he feels comfortable with. My goal is to have more money to give away freely to people that need it, like families wanting to adopt and charities helping the very poor. Having real goals that make me feel good is helping me curb my addiction to retail therapy and convenience dining…my two biggest money wasters. Yes, I would love a new Coach bag, and yes I can afford it, but it doesn’t line up with my real priorities.

Financial peace is the goal of this class and besides the money benefit, it has done really good things for communication in our marriage. I feel like Mike and I are working as a team on this project and we are talking more than ever. Yes, sacrificing is hard but I think it will be worth it. So I highly recommend that you seek out a local Financial Peace University class (they are everywhere!) and sign up soon, especially if money causes you a lot of anxiety.

Anybody out there had success following Dave Ramsey’s baby steps? I’d LOVE to hear your stories.