Sermon 2: Breaking the Chains of Debt
Introduction: Consider the Source
* If you tell a lie long enough and loud enough, it becomes "truth"
Did you know that if you spread a myth loud enough, long enough and with enough repetition, eventually a bunch of people will think it's the truth? Did you know that if you tell a lie loud enough with enough of an ad budget-with enough sophistication in your marketing campaign-society or the culture will adopt the lie as truth?
It does not make it the truth. It's still a lie. Just because a bunch of people believe it doesn't mean anything. A bunch of people are crazy. Y'all with me on this?
Isn't it scary to think that people can be indoctrinated, marketed to, advertised to, to the point that we can't breathe in our intellect and think for ourselves? For some reason, we lose our ability to think critically, then we look stupid because we believed a lie. It doesn't make it the truth if everybody votes for it. It doesn't make it the truth if everybody thinks it's so.
We live in a culture where a lot of people are really not winning. As a matter of fact, if they all believe it's not so, that probably means it is so. It's kind of a Dr. Phil moment: How's that working for you? It's not.
Just because everyone believes something doesn't mean it's right. We really have to establish that when we start talking about personal finance and money and what the Bible has to say about money. Because here's the deal: I went broke a few years ago. I lost everything because I was stupid.
And then I started reading what God's Word has to say about money, and I've gotten smarter. And what's weird about this is, it's like a lot of things in His Book-it's countercultural. It's perpendicular to what everyone says. But everyone's not winning. Their marriages aren't winning. Their kids aren't winning. Their careers aren't winning, and their money's not winning. So I really don't care what they think.
This, however, works.
* Your source for truth is Scripture
So, what I want to talk to you about tonight is this. There is a product today that has been marketed so aggressively, so thoroughly, that to imagine living without this product is inconceivable for most people in North America.
They have done such a good job selling it that people get angry at me, and I get hate mail because I suggest that you shouldn't buy this product. I've got to tell you, that's weird. That's warped. But that means that it has been indoctrinated into us so deeply that it's got its claws into our spirit, and we believe the lie so much that we will fight for the lie. That's weird.
We have a culture that's sitting in the middle of that right now, and I spend my life like a crazy preacher on the street corner, screaming out a truth that makes everyone think I'm nuts.
But I'm having fun. I'm having a blast. Because I've got to tell you, a few people start listening, then about 100,000 start listening, then millions start listening, and tens of millions start listening. That's weird.
And what happens is, every time I meet them, they're smiling because they're winning, and they go, "Dave, you taught me the truth, and I'd never heard it before. And it was weird, and I didn't like it, and I really didn't like you at first. . . . But once I started being able to win, it changed everything for me."
Let me show you what I'm talking about. Everybody stand up for a second. Here's what I want you to do. I want everybody in this place to close your eyes. Now, I will call on you if you don't play, okay? So close your eyes. Close your eyes. Yeah, you.
Now, with your eyes closed-don't open them and don't move fast so as to hurt someone or give away your answer-I want you to point north. With your eyes closed-no cheating, no looking around. It's okay to be wrong. It's just not okay not to play. I won't make fun of you for being wrong. I will make fun of you for at least not trying. In other words, guess if you don't know.
Which way is north?
Open your eyes and look around. Would you agree with me that someone's wrong? I don't know. I'm lost too, but according to my compass, north is right through here. Now, I did see one guy pointing like this. He did a little cheerleading move. But at least he was playing, right?
Here's the deal: If you weren't pointing this way, you were wrong. Ew. Is your self-esteem damaged? You were wrong. You were wrong. You weren't right. That's north! And if you don't agree with that, you're wrong!
You can't say that in our culture today, can you? It's like, "No, I get to make mine up."
No, you don't, doofus. That's north. If you want to go to Canada, this is the way. You can get there this way, but it's the long way around.
You don't get to make up the truth, regardless of how you feel. We're all about our feelings. But you're wrong! Isn't that interesting? Here's the problem. If you're going anywhere but this way and are using any point of north other than this, you're also lost! And you're gonna drive in circles, and you're gonna be frustrated, and your family's gonna be mad. You're gonna be late for dinner. Y'all with me? It's important to know the truth and act on it. That's a big deal in our culture.
So, here's the compass. Now, if you're not a person of faith, and you're just visiting because I'm here-awesome. I'm glad you're here. But I'm an evangelical Christian. It means I believe the Bible, okay? It means I believe it is the truth. It is your compass, and to the extent your little theory doesn't line up with this, you're wrong! And so am I. You can judge me by this.
People say, "You shouldn't judge people." Yeah, you should. Jesus did it all the time. He walked up to a fig tree that didn't produce figs. The fig tree is supposed to do one thing. It's supposed to fig. A fig tree that doesn't fig is useless, so Jesus cursed it and it died.
He killed it because it was a figless fig tree. He judged it. We're supposed to judge. We're supposed to judge. Not in a mean spirit or an angry spirit, but this is north. This is not. Don't go that way. You're gonna get hurt. That's what we're talking about.
Paradigm Shift
* Identify the real provider in life
It's a very important concept to grasp because what I'm talking about is this: Debt has been marketed to us.
Borrowed money is a product that financial institutions sell. It has been marketed to us so aggressively with such intensity for so long in this culture that we have come to believe that the great FICO is our provider. And we worship at the altar of the great FICO. Thank you, FICO. You are the provider of all things. We worship you, FICO. We bring you offerings of interest.
And here's the problem: I've got a finance degree with all these letters and licenses after my name, so I knew all the reasons you're supposed to borrow money and good debt and all that stuff . . . until I read the Bible. And I can't find anything in there good about debt. It says you're a slave; it says you're a fool; it says it's a curse.
It never says it's a salvation issue. You're not going to hell for borrowing money. It never says God doesn't love you if you borrow money. He loves stupid people a lot, okay? It doesn't say that at all.
But nowhere in Scripture does the Bible say anything good about debt. It is always talking about it as a warning to avoid, avoid, avoid. "Well, but what about. . .? What about. . .? What about. . .? What about. . .?"
You've got to get a new way of looking at things. A while ago, you didn't know which way was north, and so you just pointed randomly. Then you learned something. You've got a new way of looking at things. Let's look at that for a minute.
Let's look at the screen and think about this. Look at these faces. Do you see the two people looking at each other? Raise your hand if you see two people looking at each other. How many of you see the white candlestick or the vase in the middle? Good.
If you didn't see it, now you're going, "Oh, yeah. There's two things. Yeah." How many people see two people getting ready to kiss?
Okay, now . . . here's another one. See if you learn something:
• A woman without her man is nothing.
• A woman, without her man, is nothing.
• A woman: Without her, man is nothing.
Punctuation matters. Gentlemen, if you're riding home with a lady, I'll help you. The answer is the last one. But isn't it funny how your mind sees the punctuation one way or another? But now you've learned there are two possible meanings to this statement only by changing the colons and the commas. Learning has just occurred. Learning is good.
Ignorance will get you killed. That's why we tell our kids, "Don't play in the street" until we get mad at them. Then we say, "Play in the street." Right? Go play in the traffic.
But ignorance will get you killed. You've got to know the hot stove will burn you. Ignorance is not a good thing. It's not a lack of intelligence. I'm fairly intelligent about a lot of things, but I don't know other things. Intelligence is not the problem. It's "I don't know." A lot of you with a Ph.D. were pointing the wrong way a while ago. You just didn't know because you've got turned around coming into the building, and it's that way. That's not a bad thing. God's not mad at you. I'm not mad at you. You've got to learn.
* The consequence of not shifting your paradigm is slavery.
Here's another one. Give this one a look. That one's hard to see: "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender." See, what happens to us as we get out of college or we get out of high school, and we get married, right? No, this is not marriage.
"The borrower is slave to the lender."
My wife, Sharon, and I started out with a little bit of a student loan debt and a little bit of a MasterCard. Did some of you do that? She was driving a 1902 pinto. You remember those cars that blew up? They used to explode. And I went and bought her a brand-new car that I wanted . . . on payments. And then we'd been married for 20 minutes, and people came over and said, "You've got to buy a house, you've got to buy a house, you've got to buy a house, you've got to buy a house. You've got to buy a house. Everybody knows you've got to buy a house. If you don't buy a house, you'll never get ahead."
I mean, we'd been married for 20 minutes. "You've got to buy a house." So we bought a house with nothing down because that's how much we had to put down-nothing. They called it creative financing, which when you look it up in the Greek means "too broke to buy a house."
And I went to Circuit City. You remember those guys? They went broke. And I bought a television on 90 days same as cash. But it was a stereo television, so I got a stereo. Now, we had financed ourselves up to our eyeballs in the first 20 minutes of marriage.
We got car payments and stereo payments. We have a student loan left over from college. And so we go buy a house about 10 blocks over from where I grew up. Larry Burkett used to say we spend the first five to seven years of our marriage trying to obtain the same standard of living as our parents, only it took them 35 years to get there.
So there we are. We had a better car than Mom and Dad, lived in the same neighborhood as Mom and Dad, and for sure had a better stereo system than Mom and Dad.
Only problem is, you get tired because the borrower is slave to the lender. I don't care if you believe it or not. You'd be wrong if you don't believe it. Fifty-two percent of the marriages end in divorce in North America today. The number-one cause of divorce? Money fights and money problems. Hard to be married when your in chains.
People come to my office all the time like this. "Dude, can you get us out?" We sit down with them, we say, "Yeah, we can." It's hard to get out though. It's tough. If you work hard and you work a plan, you can be set free, and you can break loose.
We worked our tail ends off. We hit bottom, we crashed, we drove old beat-up cars. Our kids grew up on consignment sales-yes, experienced clothing. And we worked and we worked and we worked, and finally we paid off everything, including the house.
You know what you can do if you don't have any payments? Anything you want. When you've got payments, you're a slave. "Well, that's a metaphor from the Old Testament." Yeah, well, when they towed off my Jaguar and repossessed it, it wasn't a metaphor, sweetie. When they foreclosed on the house that I owned, it wasn't a metaphor. It was life.
And have you ever met a generous slave? Hard to be generous when you're not in control of your life. Hard to win. Hard to look into the future. Hard to think about winning when all you do is pay payments. All the money comes in, all the money goes out. Only the names are changed to protect the innocent. Why?
We believed a lie. We thought that was the best way to win with money, and that's what we were told over and over and over. "Well, you'll never have a nice car if you don't have a payment." Really?
The average car payment in America today is $485 over 86 months. Take $485 and put into a decent growth stock mutual fund into a Roth IRA-from age 30 to 70, averaging 12% growth, you'll have $5.6 million. I hope you like your car.
That's the cost of slavery. It's a $5 million car, and it's going down in value like a rock. That's where Chevy got that-"like a rock." Now, I have a Chevy truck, okay? So you Ford people are no better. It's "Found On the Road Depreciated."
It's not about the brand; it's about the concept. "Well, you'll never have a nice car." Why not take the $485 and put it in a cookie jar for 10 months? Is that $4,850 after 10 months? Does that add up in your city? Is that like $5,000?
Can you go out there and buy you a little Honda Accord or a little Ford Taurus for $5,000 to get you back and forth to work? If you don't have a car payment, could you keep saving $500? And 10 months later, would you have another $5,000 to put with your $5,000 car? Would that be a $10,000 car? This is called common sense. It's how your grandmother did it.
Not "I impulsed a car." You did what?
So, how do we get out? "Dave, you've got to have a credit card." Really? I don't have one. "I'll get points!" Well, good. I've met with thousands of millionaires in 20 years of doing financial counseling, and I've never met a millionaire who said, "Dave, you know, I made my money with my points."
"Dave, you know that Discover points put me right on the top. That was my breakthrough financially." I never hear that.
"Those airline miles, yeah, changed my life, Dave." Never heard that.
But I hear all these people with these theories that they keep playing with snakes and can't figure out why they keep getting bitten.
I've got four pieces of plastic in my wallet. I have a debit card on my personal account, which means there has to be money in there to use it. I have a debit card on my business account, which means there has to be money in there to use it. I have my driver's license and my handgun carry permit. That's all I've got.
Everybody in California just ran for the exit. Phew.
So car payments don't work. And credit cards don't.
"You can't be a student without a student loan." You can if you pay in-state tuition and you work while you're in school. "Oh, I can't do that. My grades might go down." Oh, actually if you work 19 to 34 hours a week, the recent research shows you end up with a higher GPA than nonworking students.
Why? People who work actually are paying for part of it, so they actually go to class and everything. It's very weird. Strange stuff. It's old school, though, isn't it? I kind of sound like your grandmother or your great-grandmother. It's because those decades had common sense.
We were still aligned biblically with our money, and we hadn't become so self-absorbed that we were buying stuff we couldn't afford with money we didn't have to impress people we don't even really like. We were in control.
Breaking the Chains of Debt
It's time to stop. So, how do we get out of debt?
It's tough. Stupid has an orbital pull. It has a gravitational pull to it. When you're stuck in orbit of stupid, it's hard to get out. You know how you break an orbit? Just ask this rocket scientist. Here's how you break an orbit. You have to expend extra energy. You can't keep doing what you've been doing, or you're gonna keep getting what you've been getting. Hello.
You've got to blow it up! That's how you get out of debt. I hear these people. They call up, and they go, "Dave, I have $20,000 in debt. I make $600,000 a year, and I don't think I can get out."
"Really? I don't think you can, either."
"Why not?"
"Because you don't think you can. And that's your biggest problem."
"Dave, I've got $20,000 in debt, and I make $22,000, and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get out of debt. I sold one of the kids. Should I sell the other one?"
"I think you're gonna make it."
"Why?"
"Because you're willing to pay a price. You're willing to do what it takes to bust the orbit. It requires energy."
* God wants you to be free.
I found it in the Bible. It's interesting that all these things are in the Bible. Proverbs 6:1-7 says, "If you signed surety, my son," which is old English Bible-talk for "You've got yourself in debt." If you've gotten into debt, the Bible says, do this. Now, listen. I had a revelation spiritually a few years ago. I discovered God is smarter than me. So when God says, "There's a problem. If you want to be rid of the problem, do this," I'm listening to Him. He's the Alpha and the Omega. He's smart.
So this is a math formula for me. There's a problem on this side of the equation. The other side of the equation gives me my answer for this. Y'all following me? That's how my mind works.
* Gazelle intensity
I'm a math guy. So if you're in debt, do this. And I thought, "I found it. I'm gonna be able to get America out of debt." And I'm reading, and it says, "Give no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids. Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, a bird from the hand of the fowler."
And I went, "Huh? I'm sorry, God. Animal metaphor . . . I can't follow here. I'm kind of lost. Really, you could have just told me what to do. Gazelles? Seriously?"
This is how I pray. He's not intimidated by me, okay? So I did not understand. Here's how you get out of debt. "No sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids." I get that part-work, okay? My grandmother used to say that. "There's a great place to go when you're broke: work." Yeah.
And so I've got that part, but then, "Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter? Lord, show me what I don't understand." Sure enough, He answered my prayer with the Discovery Channel. I didn't know He worked through the Discovery Channel, but He does.
So I hit the Discovery Channel that night, scanning channels, and there were gazelles. They were out there gazelling around. I thought, Dude, I was just reading about you guys. This is how you get out of debt. "Like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter."
Now, you know the Discovery Channel wouldn't be filming if the gazelles were there by themselves. You know someone was there looking for lunch in all the right places, and, you know, gazelles, they have a little cheetah detector behind their ear. When they see a cheetah or smell a cheetah, they say, "Uh-oh. Cheetah! Ru-u-n!" Because they don't want to be eaten.
The gazelles cannot outrun the cheetah! The cheetah is the fastest mammal on dry land. He can go from zero to 47 miles an hour in four leaps. Wow! This is a fast cat. He's trying to have lunch. You can't beat him. You've just got to outmaneuver him and hope he quits. And so here's how you get out of debt.
Here's how you get out of debt. You run for your life! You've got to bust it! You've got to run! You've got to go, go, go, go, go as hard as you can go! You've got to go crazy!
Honey, you can wander into debt. You can't wander out. You've got to get gazelle intense.
Here's an interesting thing. The cheetah only catches the gazelle one in 16 times. The gazelle gets away more often than not. The gazelle only gets eaten one in 16 to 19 times. And the cheetah is faster.
I got to thinking about that. Why is it that the cheetah is faster, but the gazelle wins most of the time? Why is that?
Motivation.
One just wants to have lunch; the other one wants to stay alive. Good metaphor, God. I've got it. I've got to work at getting out of debt as if my life depends on it. Because financially, it does. You're gonna work your whole life for the man otherwise. You get to the end of your life, and all of your income's gone to pay payments, and you've just been a slave.
Isn't the Bible cool? It's cool. It'll set you free.
* Get out of debt
So what we're figuring out here is that this is not a math problem; this is a behavior problem. It works like this. When you get ready to get out of debt, you use a thing called the debt snowball. You list your debts, smallest to largest. You pay minimum payments on everything but the little one, and you attack the little one with a vengeance-regardless of the interest rate. Why? Because we're trying to get some success.
You knock out the little one, and then you move to the next one. Then you knock out the next one, and you move to the next one, then you knock out the next one, and you move to the next one. And you keep hammering and hammering, and every time you knock off another one, you start to believe you can win, and the more you believe you can win, the more you pour into it. It's called hope. And it works.
Five Steps for Getting Out of Debt
Now, there are five things you do to get out of debt.
1. Quit borrowing
The first thing you do to get out of debt is this: Quit borrowing more money. That's hard, isn't it? You need to get out your credit cards, and you need to light some candles, and you need to go down to the store and get you some big scissors and have you a plasectomy.
It's time for plastic surgery. You've got to make a decision here. And if you have kids, have them help you so you can say, "I 'Discover'-ed freedom. Yeah, 'Chase' this. Yeah, mm-hmm. Home Depot? They take cash. Mm-hmm. Victoria Secret? They take cash. It's okay."
Right? This is the deal, man.
Isn't that weird? "You're weird." Yeah, I am, but I'm not broke anymore, and I don't owe anybody any money.
You've got to draw a line in the sand. Say, "I'm done." As soon as you do, God will test you. "This is a test." You will cut up your credit cards, go outside, and your tire will be flat. Right? Isn't that how it works? Because He's checking.
"Were you kidding?" That's what He's saying. "Were you kidding?"
2. Save money
The next thing you've got to do to get out of debt is you've got to learn to save money. You need to save $1,000-a starter emergency fund-then build a full three- to six-month emergency fund. So if something happens, you don't need credit cards because you have money to fix the alternator on the car, the transmission when it goes out, to pay the house payment if you get laid off. When life happens, you need an emergency fund.
3. Sell something
The third thing you do is you need to sell something. You need to amputate the Tahoe. Stuff's got to go. Craigslist is your new best friend. Put the dog on eBay and the cat on Craigslist.
Everything's going. We're out of here, baby. You've got enough junk around your house to get yourself way out of debt. You don't have to sell the big stuff, necessarily, but you may need to. You can look at the numbers, and you go, "Mm-hmm. That was stupid." When you say that, sell it. It's just stuff.
Here's the deal. When you don't have any payments, you know what will happen later? You get money. When you have money, you know what you can buy? Whatever you want. But you've got to live like no one else so that later you can live like no one else. It's hard. There's a price to be paid.
4. Get a part-time job
The fourth thing is, you've got to take a part-time job or extra overtime or a new job. Income is half of this equation. There's income and there's outgo.
It is a great place to go when you're broke: to work. It's a surefire money-making scheme. "Well, Dave, you can't . . . it's just the economy, and . . ."
I had a pastor friend of mine, he said a guy come into his office. He said, "I can't find a job." He said, "Go to Home Depot. Buy one of those things you put on your back that blows leaves. Go to the rich-people neighborhood. Rich people are afraid of leaves. You are suddenly employed. You've got a job."
It's amazing. Now, do I want to do that? No, I don't want to do that, but I'll do that before my family will go hungry. I'll do that if I've got to do it for a period of time so I never have to do it again. I did a lot of stuff. I worked a lot of hours. I poured it on. We did a lot of stuff that I never want to do again, ever.
5. Remember that prayer really works
The fifth one is this: Prayer really works. Pray.
"Dave, I don't know. God's mad at me." He's not mad at you. You haven't been talking to Him. He misses you.
"Well, Dave, I've done some really stupid things, some bad things." I know. I understand. He's still not mad at you. How many of you have enough kids that you've got a stupid one? Don't raise your hand if they're sitting near you.
Think about your heavenly Father. We laugh, and we're made in His image. I bet He laughs. I bet He goes, "Hey, Gabriel. Watch that. Ooh, that's gonna leave a mark. Ooh-ooh!" You know He's doing that. He's got to be, right? Not laughing at us, but we entertain Him. We have to. Because we entertain each other. You're watching someone and go, "You did what? You've got to be kidding me."
Don't you do that? So He's not mad at you. He just misses you. Here's the deal. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He owns the hills. If you've got a financial problem, you ought to talk to your Dad who loves you more than anything. He can handle it really easy.
Phone home, E.T. Check in.
There Is Hope
See, here's the problem. This debt gets down on us, and it holds us down, and it squeezes our life out of us. Because slavery steals your hope.
Proverbs 13:12 says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." When you're hopeless, you're lost. "But when desire comes, it is the tree of life." So work extra. Sell some stuff. Get on a written plan. Go crazy. Go to prayer. Save money. Stop borrowing. Use the debt snowball and dedicate yourself to no payments.
Think about this: What could the people of God do for the kingdom of God if we didn't have any payments?
Closing Prayer
God, we thank You for these folks. We ask You to pour prosperity into their families, that You bless their marriages, that You cause some of the energy and the passion that You've given me to wear off on somebody tonight, and they go change their lives.
Father, we ask that You wrap Your arms around those who are hurting and scared, and You gently whisper hope to them, because they can do it. I've watched the broken come back in a blaze of glory when they decided to. Father, we thank You that that is Your desire for us.
In Jesus' name, amen.
