Financial Wisdom & Folly (1)

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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So welcome everybody to our first official church Bible study very excited today to To get this going and I know we've been planning it out for a while But I do want us to Be able to come together with opportunities like these to learn

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Different things and to fellowship and to strengthen each other in different areas. So I think that One of the things that I've I've been really dwelling on or meditating on or thinking on is helping us to really prepare for what's coming for what lies ahead and And It's funny because I've been preaching on eschatology recently and you know how it says that the last days are

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Times are going to be evil bad times and we've all witnessed that and experienced that in our nation and everything and so We got a

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I really want us to be prepared I want to try to kind of help us to get prepared for those things

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And so this is going to be a little bit more at least to start out with it's going to be a little bit more practical and just kind of discussing certain components of having

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How to live out the Christian life in certain areas of our lives Like no stone unturned all aspects of our lives should be submitted to the

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Lordship of Christ. Amen so we One of the things that I wanted to start out with was financial wisdom and folly and how to wisely manage our finances and achieve some financial independence that is

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Not reliant on the government on welfare things like that and to just so that we can be stable financially as much as possible and to also

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Lean on each other right to lean on each other to look out for each other because You know, we all kind of see the writing of the wall.

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The times are coming. So Just kind of that's my what I've been seeking to Try to think about how to best communicate this

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And discuss it as a church and these will be interactive so you can raise your hand and you know We can make this interactive and Just kind of keep the discussion going

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But that's really the goal is to have some kind of achieve that sort of economic financial

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You know Even food sort of depend independence so that we can take care of our families of ourselves

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Even when times get rough and to have a plan to be prepared That's what the Bible constantly talks about especially in Proverbs and related passages where we need to be prepared

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We need to always be prepared always be ready. Not just spiritually not just when it comes to apologetics or evangelism, but also in Every aspect of our lives.

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We should always have a plan and be prepared so With that said

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I really wanted to cover some basic stuff, but I have a poll a little some questions.

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I wanted to ask y 'all What how many of you are familiar with Dave Ramsey Okay, so pretty much everybody how many actually went through the

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Financial Peace University from Dave Ramsey? okay, so a lot of this kind of motivated me because My wife and I when we got married

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We went through the Dave Ramsey the courses and the Financial Peace University We didn't do it right because we didn't do the homework which was kind of the the point of it you were supposed to do it together as a group and I guess

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I got confused and I didn't realize that you were supposed to actually Apply this stuff while you were doing the class, but but you know, it helped us it helped us it helped us in some ways and It did help us to kind of come to some sort of Stability financially because we had different spending habits and all this stuff and so There's just but but more recently

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I've been very upset and disturbed about the fact that a lot of the things that Dave Ramsey teaches

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I've come to strongly disagree with now and And that's part of what makes this

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Challenge is that there's so many experts out there, right? There's so many gurus out there everybody all these people claiming to know what they're talking about and they are giving you counsel or advice about Serious matters because it's where you put your money or how to manage your money, you know, these things are important They have they have consequences

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They have consequences with how we What ends up happening to our our financial well -being and you know,

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I know like what's it? What what did what did Paul Washer say that one time? He said and one of his messages like I care very little whether or not your checkbook is balanced

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Well, guess what folks God does care So we need to care about those things because God cares about Whether we're in debt or not whether our checkbook is balanced or not whether our finances are in order or not

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Are you responsible with you paying your bills and budgeting and all of those things? These are things that God cares about because he wants us to be relying on him and not be irresponsible with our money and So and yeah, of course there's no we shouldn't seek to love money the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil like I believe

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Timothy says but at the same time Money is a means that we have to buy things to acquire things into I mean

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It's it's means just like God uses means on earth to accomplish his will money is a means that we use to accomplish things on earth and and So it's it's not something that we can avoid it's something that we have to deal with and I want us to really gain a biblical perspective on this

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So that's one of the really the things I want and you know This will be like a lot more flexible in our study

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Like we can I know I've talked about some of y 'all about having like playing a video and discussing it

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Like I would those there's some really good stuff that we can discuss to video curriculums and stuff like that But right but really this is like I want to get this down first Right so we can be prepared and just kind of help everybody make sure that they have some good a good financial plan with a biblical perspective on on on all of this stuff and Does anybody have a

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Bible a spare Bible So yeah, my apologies,

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I I got a little hung up at work today, but so We I mentioned

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Dave Ramsey so Y 'all may have heard the baby steps from Dave Ramsey, right you the first step is of course to pay off your debt and You know, that's not necessarily that's good advice.

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So like because the scriptures say where's that passage in Proverbs? I think it's in Proverbs 23

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Where It says that the borrower is slave to the lender so Yeah, I think it's in Is it in 23?

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Yeah, if somebody finds that we can go ahead and take a look at that passage like that Okay, here it is in Proverbs 22

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So Proverbs 22 starting in verse 6 it says Train up a child in the way. He should go even when he is old.

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He will not depart from it the rich Rules over the poor and the borrower becomes the lender slave so There's a very clear

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Consequence to borrowing money And it and this is where we want to be careful, right?

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Because who we borrow money to or borrow money from It it changes the relationship if the expectation is to pay it back.

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You know, I remember when I was in high school I think I had sold my my paintball gun to one of my friends from high school for I don't know a couple hundred dollars or something and So we had agreed to it, but he didn't have the money

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So he said he would pay it back later and then time went on and he never paid He never paid me back and that basically tarnished the relationship he kind of avoided me and we just never really talked after that because of the

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You know, that's that relationship changes it puts tension on it and because it makes you a slave in that sense of requiring to pay that money back so we have to be mindful of those things when we borrow money or when we

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Cosign that's generally not a good idea, you know cosigning or borrowing money or lending money

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You have to be really careful with those things because especially when it's somebody who is a Friend or somebody from church.

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You want to be really careful because that can really strain the relationship right, so those are things that we want to be careful with and You know, but so we we had a lot of debt my wife and I we had a lot of debt when we

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When we got married and it was tough. It was very challenging And We really had to Stretch our dollar we had to really buckle down You know rice and beans and beans and rice and except in our case.

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It was like chicken and chickpeas or something but We had to really strap down because I didn't make a whole lot of money when

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I first graduated and and I didn't want welfare I Didn't want the government taking care of us.

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I didn't want any of that help So it was a principle that we live by and yeah, it was tough

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But it forced us to just trust God and rely on him and he provided every step of the way

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So he took care of us and even though yeah, it was challenging. It was tough and we had to work things out and but we we just part of this is having a healthy balance of how to make sense of these things as a whole in terms of government and economics and and all of those areas where it's a it's a daily thing, you know, we date we have to deal with on a daily basis and When When we were starting out

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We had a lot of we had a lot of financial trouble, you know You know what they say what the number one cause of divorce often is right

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Have you all heard what the number one cause of divorce tends to be? Yeah, the it tends to be well last time

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I checked I guess it tends to be over money over financial problems now so It's it's important to have a good really good understanding of this as as Believers and our the way we manage our finances should reflect our

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Christianity It should reflect our Christianity. We should not be going recklessly in debt.

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We should be spending wisely frugally Below our means not above our means right?

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Simple stuff that everybody a lot of you know back in the day used to be more Commonly practiced but now you have to actually say it

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Because our society is so dysfunctional now with credit and debt and all these things but So we just we want to be responsible financially and I had some handouts that I wanted to Kind of show and tell and just kind of give you all some

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Tips on how to implement this stuff and what has helped us in our finite our personal finances

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But you know, I mentioned Dave Ramsey because I Used to recommend him and I used to like him even though I had some things like what

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I don't I don't know about that or you know, and so he's a very popular resource for believers for Christians to that Tap into it that they tap into and one of the things that I started to realize that He's just doesn't have a good a good position or view on is precious metals

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Okay, so everybody know what precious metals are right? Silver gold basically primarily silver and gold and if you ever

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Seen Dave Ramsey or watch his videos or his phone calls, you know his show He despises gold

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He despises it he doesn't like it. He doesn't really like precious metals he he all he what he mainly recommends it with investing is all the traditional stuff like 401ks investment retirement accounts with government accounts basically and mutual funds and he doesn't like gold because he

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I think part of it was he did some he did some scheme where he You you invest a certain amount and if in a certain amount of time the the gold

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Rises or falls then you get to win a bunch of returns, but it's super risky and he lost a bunch of money

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And he's like, I don't like it. It doesn't it doesn't make it doesn't help you at all And even when times get rough, you're not going to want gold.

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You're gonna want like actual goods to bought to barter and really the the ironic thing about this is that With the way of the economy is going right now many of you are aware and are seeing the rise in prices, right?

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prices are rising and things are becoming more expensive to buy and The reason for that primarily is because our government keeps recklessly printing more and more money

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With absolutely nothing to back it with So it used to be backed by soup by gold that was called the gold standard but that pretty much got removed because the government wanted the ability to not have restraint in how much money they could print and so We are our dollars have devalued by like 97 % or more

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They don't meet they don't they're not worth hardly anything anymore that they used to be worth and So that's the big problem with inflation is that our government prints more and more money and we have to understand certain things that when when when there's when there's

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When the government controls the currency and we have to make a distinction between money and currency this is an important thing because Currency is what we use to spend to acquire goods.

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That's just currency The dollar is not real money because it's not worth anything It's not actually real money real money has certain characteristics

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It should be Fungible you can divide it up. It should preserve value that's the main thing that our money our currency doesn't have it doesn't preserve well value and Real money preserves value.

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That's why if you look in the Bible if you search for the word silver and gold you will find like hundreds of references all throughout the the

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Bible and you in the Bible describes wealthy men like Abraham like Job as Wealthy because they had in part livestock and silver and gold

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Lots of it Solomon the the richest man He had a lot of silver and gold so We just there are things that we need to be aware of so that we're not

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Confused or deceived by well if I have a bunch of money in the bank that I should be okay Because that's actually not okay

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Banks are one of the most unsafe institutions to put your money in and that's something that we all need to be aware of and careful with careful of so Now I'm not trying to I'm not trying to scare you or You know scare you into into you know, what do you call it like?

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Getting into some scheme or whatever. I'm just telling you like it is and That's really the goal of this is for us to be properly a

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Proper biblical view of what real money is and What it means to preserve how to best preserve it and protect our our

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Wealth so that like the Bible says we can leave an inheritance for our children's children

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Amen So and in order to do that it requires for us to wisely manage our wealth and our finances

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So a big thing about Money is

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Really what we want to deal with is simple budgeting and You know, how many of you budget?

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Okay. Well, that's good. Well, maybe I don't need to I Mean I need to go spend too much time on this, but that's that's awesome.

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We should it's all it's very wise to budget It is very important to budget Because And this is one thing that I did think

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Dave Ramsey does a pretty good job of explaining It's because when you budget the way he advocates which is essentially like a zero based

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Budget where you assign you pre -assign all of your money your income to a category to something

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That way you tell your money what to do and where it goes as opposed to What we used to do a lot of my wife and I doing a post -mortem

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Doing a where where do my money go? and That's not a situation that you want to be in because you're you're being passive with your money as opposed to active and pro

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Reactive as opposed to proactive and responsible right, so I have some

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I use, you know, we have different budgeting forms that we we and we just use these because we started off with Dave Ramsey and they

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They basically work for us. So we just kind of kept using them, but there's plenty of you know budgeting things that you can use forms and apps and stuff and one of the apps that I Really what

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I used to use was mint But as you all know, I was discontinued and it was replaced by a credit karma

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Which I didn't like because it didn't have the same features. So I actually switched to a really good app.

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That's very similar and It's called pocket guard, so that's a really good budgeting app that we've has been very helpful for us and So We one of one of the main forms that I like to use that we use as a family are

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There's this monthly cash flow plan. Yes that yes.

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It's one word Pocket guard. Yes It's on Android and on on iPhone as well

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Apple So I have two forms here They got chicken scratch all over him because I prepared them, but This is a monthly cash flow plan

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This is where you tell you your money every month where it's going. It's got a

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Category for pretty much everything you need for charity or giving Saving housing utilities food clothing transportation medical health insurance personal stuff

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Recreation debts all of it. So you put it all on paper So, you know exactly where your money is going and you leave no money unassigned

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So you try to look ahead of time? Okay, what am I going to spend on this this month? you know how much gas how many bills how much debts how whatever and You as you pre -assign it in a budgeted category in the column

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And then you start tracking it through an app or through a different form which is an allocated spending plan, but you can you

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I like to use the app to track our spending and we You track it and you see how much you spent and you say okay well

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I spent a little more than I thought I was going to spend so then you make adjustments for the next month as you need to or whatever and You Prepare this before the month starts so you typically you want to prepare this a day or so before the month starts so that when it starts you're ready to go and So this is really really important and this is one of the basic sort of strategies that Dave Ramsey talks about You have three basic buckets of where you put your money in The first one is giving right

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We give we give the foot. It's like tithing the first fruits It's sort of a similar principle in the

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Old Testament now of course biblically speaking in the New Testament We don't have a set amount that we're required to tithe right, but But at least you know 10 % for us generally works.

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It's something that we can Allocate budget for and it works, and we we we sort of put it there

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It's on autopilot automatically drafted, and we're good. We're good to go so That's what we use in our situation

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We like to just go ahead and tithe the the every every paycheck or whatever we just tie a 10 % of that and we're good to go and the

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Lord He blesses giving obviously he it's a it's a principle that he does bless, and I'm not talking about you know

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I'm not talking about oh you sow a seed and you're gonna get that car What a like that's that's utter foolishness right?

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I'm not talking about that I'm just saying that the Lord provides because those who are give with a cheerful heart

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The Lord blesses and he he takes care of so I'm just and it's even if you don't have a lot of money to give

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Um that's that's okay It's not like you have to you don't have to feel bad if you can't give a lot of money

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The important thing is to have a generous spirit and to be willing to give now if y 'all are rich Which many of us probably most of us are not the

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Bible does command you to give liberally? so If you ever strike it rich let me know and I'll be sure to keep you in check and that you're giving it up literally

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Because that the Bible does command that for those of us who are wealthy which I know not many of us are but So Giving the next thing.

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This is really important. The next thing is Saving right saving

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So we give up front we get first and then we also save and this is one thing that has helped me a lot with The Dave Ramsey stuff that I've learned it kind of helped us to Keep track of our finances in a relatively somewhat stable way

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But this form that I use that we use it's right. It's from the Dave Ramsey website, and it's called a breakdown of savings a

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Breakdown of savings is basically just okay. What big expenses do I have to? save up for either in a year or longer and Instead of getting caught with a surprise of smack.

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Oh, man, I have to pay $4 ,000 in property taxes, which is criminal and then

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El Paso that happens a lot and we shouldn't but instead of Being surprised and all men.

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I have to pay it all in one one blow What this helps you do is to break it up into monthly saving

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Plan in a monthly saving plan so you save up for it throughout the year Gradually instead of all at once at the very end

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So this is really really important very powerful because it helps you to build up savings and we use this for several things like we use it for a car saving up for a car or Insurance because you know and this this helps you out even more

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This is why I want to talk about this stuff because you save a lot more money when you save money When you pay for insurance, for example, like car insurance auto insurance our our premiums so to give you an example our premiums are like 70 bucks a month for both of our cars fully insured

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Maximum coverage 35 bucks per car a month and How do we pull that off?

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Well, obviously you don't want to have a bad record, right? Accidents tickets, so like you don't want to that's part of our walking out of Christianity right being responsible, but also

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You save money when you pay it all in one lump sum. So we pay our insurance in six month pay six month in Chunks, so it's we save you save us a good amount of money that way

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So we save up for it every month because we know we have to pay for it in six months every six months So we save up.

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Okay, we're gonna save up 70 bucks a month And then we leave it in our savings account and when time comes to pay for it

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We take it out of there and we we pay for it and we're good so They're very basic stuff, but it really helps to kind of manage your finances that way

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So that you can save more and get more out of your money your dollars so we you know, we you can use it for a number of things especially for things that are like that are that For things that are that you can't pay for in a single month

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If it's something that you're not able to pay for in one month Then it's something that you probably want to and that you know that you're going to need to get right, so if it's insurance or it's

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Furniture we have a furniture fund as well that we save up every every so car repairs

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Man that's an if that's a big one right every way how many how many cars broken down? How many of y 'all scars were

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I mean, that's just expected right? So planning for it ahead is very powerful because we we we save up a

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Certain amount of money every month for car repairs and that category is only for car repairs

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You know, you don't want to cheat yourself or start bleeding into categories unless you have a You're making a conscious decision to do it, right?

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But yeah, we we had this man. We had to spend a whole bunch of money on Air conditioning repairs over $500 of that and a couple hundred dollars here and it was a lot of money but thankfully we were able to shoulder a lot of that because of our saving so that's how a lot of this kind of is designed to work and Even for gifts for homeschooling for bills like doctor bills like if for example another big one

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We use midwives for birth for for my art when we have kids and Midwives typically they charge a a set amount like three thousand dollars, for example

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And it's typically much more affordable than going to a hospital and you don't have to deal with all the vaccines and all that other garbage that to try to give you in the hospital, but we

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You can save up for that right if you're planning to have kids or you know Whatever you can save up for that ahead of time.

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And so that way you're prepared to Pay for those things when the time comes and And So that this is very this is very useful for for those reasons and It helps it helps to manage

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Those expenses that you know, you're going to need it used to be called I know Dave Ramsey talks about this. It used to be called a sinking fund a sinking fund was

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Because basically everybody knew that your roof House roof or whatever would give out like every 20 years or 30 or so and so it was a lot of money

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It's a lot of money to replace the roof. It's like thousands of dollars So same similar stuff with air conditioning or whatever and so a sinking fund was that you would save it up gradually every month a

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Certain amount so that you when the time came obviously you would have enough to pay for it and not have to go into debt

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Or take out a loan and really mess yourself up So that's one of those principles that have really helped us to achieve some stability and Really another big component of this is

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You know, we have a receipt box So we have a receipt box

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Where we categorize all our receipts and some of them are very simple to categorize, right if it's like fast food

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Well, it's just fast food, right? That's not difficult gas, you know fuel. Those are easy categories to Categorize and that's to help you budget because when you budget you have a category right you have, you know, personal care stuff or Groceries, you know, we boy our groceries bill has oh

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Lord, you know so there's but but there's ways of helping to Manage those things by also categorizing.

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So for example What we do is we categorize our receipts And you don't have to categorize all of them

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Mainly, it's the ones that like you buy different types of things in one store like Costco or you know

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What's it called? Albert, you know, maybe Albertsons or Stores where they have a bunch of different types of things

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But we have like a Costco receipt here and I have okay, so a hundred and eight dollars in vitamins, right

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And the rest were groceries so we We use that to help us to allocate.

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Okay. Well, we're going to spend a couple hundred dollars on vitamins we're going to spend you know, twelve hundred dollars in groceries and That's a real number in case you were wondering and it's gotten higher than that as well, so but but So that that helps us to that helps us to When you categorize the receipts you're able to track them in your app or on your allocated spending plan your monthly spending plan so that you can

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Track your spending and make sure that you're meeting your your allocated budget amounts, right?

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So very simple very simple to do It does take a little work a little time it takes time to build these habits up if you're not already doing them but it does help you to build that discipline so that you know where your money is going and you know and My wife will tell you

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We used to get We used to really Duke it out because it was it was a struggle to try to put this in place and But my wife and I we have a lot more peace of mind

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Because it really helps you to know. Okay. Well, we know what we have. We know what we need We know how much we can spend we there's there's you have a peace of mind that it gives you and it's very helpful and You know, so those are all things that are

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Really good to to put into place if you're not already doing them and Because A part of this it helps you to What it helps you to plan for things that you want to buy or save up for you know

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If you want to start looking into What investments or precious metals or buying a whole life insurance policy things like that This helps you to Make room for it in your budget and save up for it

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Even if you don't have a lot of money right now doesn't matter you can still Little by little you can build it up.

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You can build it up and build it up and because we started off with very little We started off with very little and we had no food stamps

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Even though we could I mean that's the first thing they offer you at the hospital we were like, okay you qualify and said why why would

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I qualify when I have a salary and that made me upset because you know

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We didn't need it, but they still were willing to throw money at us and it's tempting, you know

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I'm not telling you I was tempted. I was like man. That's That could really help us do other stuff.

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But nope I Don't like I don't that that comes with too many

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Too many, what do you call it? Yeah, it comes with a lot of strings attached and then it's just not you know, the government is not

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Government welfare shouldn't even exist in the first place. That's part of what we need to have a good understanding of regarding Biblical view of government.

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There's only really two things the government should be doing Right two things and this is important if you look at Romans 13

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Romans 13 actually tells us what what two -fold function the government should do and This is really important stuff and I really encourage everybody to look at the

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The Trinity Foundation, they have really excellent books and articles and lectures that you can listen to online

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That talks about a lot of this stuff politics economics in addition to you know, apologetics theology all of it

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But philosophy but in Romans 13 so here

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We see that Let me start at the beginning

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Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves

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For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil Do you want to have no fear of authority?

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Do what is good and you will have praise for the same For it is a minister of God to you for good

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But if you do what is evil be afraid for it does not bear the sword for nothing

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For it is a minister of God an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection not only because of wrath but also for conscience sake

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For because of this you also pay taxes for rulers are servants of God devoting themselves to this very thing

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Render to all what is due them tax to whom taxes due custom to a custom fear to whom he fear honor to whom honor.

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Oh Nothing to anyone except to love one another for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled a law So there you see a lot of important principles that we've been discussing right?

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It even says right here. Oh, no, man anything Do not go into debt

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Right do not go into debt if you can help it That's a bad idea because you will become a slave

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Except to love each other right except to love your neighbor and your and our and each other but Here it also tells us the twofold purpose of government.

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It is simply to Praise or commend the good and to punish the evil

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That's it that's really all the government is supposed to be focusing on and Sadly We have really lost sight of that as a country because things used to be more that way earlier on in our early founding but now we have welfare programs and we have educational government schools and All these public things public part you do the word public in case you didn't know the word public means government

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Okay public parks are government parks public libraries are government libraries and The problem with all of those things is that when you when you have a government institution your taxes have to pay for it whether you use it or not and It doesn't matter if it's a good service or not your taxes are paying for it so it what it does is it completely destroys the free market capitalist principle of When you have people competing for a service

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That tends to motivate the people providing the service to do a better job because they want your money they want your dollar

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So hey, we'll provide better services in that case. So in other words if libraries were only private libraries they would be much better because We would have

40:02

Libraries that would be competing for your money And so they would give you better books and services and products and all this stuff

40:08

But because our taxes pay for it you're stuck paying for them whether you use them or not whether you like them or not

40:15

And that's the problem It's it's a form of socialism or centralized planning which is what the famous economist talks about F .A.

40:27

Hayek Friedrich Hayek and Centralized planning is a form of serfdom.

40:33

That's why our property taxes are so high Right we have Outrageously high property taxes in El Paso because we pay for all of these government things

40:44

Parks and schools and all of this stuff. If you look at your property tax bill, you'll see the breakdown of what you're paying for for public roads and government roads and you know everything and then the what's it called that hospital that the worst hospital in the city

41:01

You yeah, you yeah, you know UMC But but you know people vote for this stuff so we also have a good citizens of this of You know this city.

41:14

We have an oblige. We do have a responsibility to be aware of these things and vote against them We don't want this all this taxation and burden on us because it's it's a redistribution of wealth right, so I Know I'm kind of jumping around a lot.

41:30

But does that make sense so far any questions? Yes Yeah So one of the things that has become more difficult in our in our society is that before in the earlier days of our of our nation, there was something there was a difference between Welfare and goodwill

42:09

So goodwill is something that people would give out of their own goodwill not out of government compulsion not out of those things and when things were like that Everything was cheaper.

42:23

Everything was more affordable everybody had more money because we didn't have higher taxes to pay for all of these things like government welfare and all of these other pro

42:33

Medicaid and Medicare and all that stuff and so those things

42:42

Have forced us to pay for them through taxation which now makes it harder for us to achieve goodwill and give out of goodwill and The one of the important things that a church is is supposed to do is a certain kind of ministry and it's called a ministry of mercy mercy ministry mercy ministry is

43:08

One of the functions of what a deacon does as well a church It tends to manage those things because if you see in the

43:16

New Testament Like in the book of Acts in the New Testament The deacons would be the ones who would manage they would distribute those who had need in the church and that's the model that I'm trying to get us to move towards is to rely on each other

43:34

Rely more on each other so that we don't have to rely on government or on other welfare programs like that so that way

43:44

The Lord is the one that is providing and working through those means now, you know

43:50

Is it a sin to get welfare? No, I'm not necessarily saying that we use the

43:58

Medicaid When we were first married because like I said, we didn't make a whole lot of money and We had

44:08

Medicaid for our first son's birth but you know, I I Fought it every step of though.

44:16

I was so Just it's not something that we want to Indulge in if we if it is something that we take a whole way that we use it should only be

44:29

Minimal amount possible not it's not rely on it more than we need to but really the goal of this is to get us to rely more on each other and One of the things about this too is that everything that has

44:48

Resulted as because of welfare has degraded in the quality of everything because You'll see this if you read there's articles on the

44:57

Trinity Foundation because now that we have Medicaid Medicaid when when when a doctor accepts

45:06

Medicaid Medicaid only pays like a third of the bill if that so they pay

45:14

When you accept Medicaid you're losing money Basically as a doctor and so what that does is that also has

45:22

Unintended consequences it degrades the quality of care Because now you you're you're you're they know, they're not going to get the full bill so that's not going to motivate them to do a good job and provide a good service because Again, the government is involved and they're providing this stuff for welfare for those who don't have it

45:44

And so that's how it makes everything worse and There's the there's the the feeling that well

45:54

This is something that I was actually going to make things better for those who don't have the means To to get that kind of help, but the reason we're in such miserable situate conditions right now is because of these welfare programs have gotten out of control and So it degrades and I know because I work in the

46:12

Medicaid industry I've In fact, I'll tell you something else. We have in Texas a

46:20

CHIP program called CHIP perinatal CHIP perinatal is for mothers that don't qualify for Medicaid, but They can use their children

46:33

For for Medicaid and a lot of that is for illegal immigrants Because this whole lie about anchor babies, right that if the baby is born here, then he's automatically a

46:44

US citizen So he qualifies or she qualifies but the mom is an illegal alien So she doesn't qualify and so we actually this is how twisted things are in our in our nation

46:54

And we're not the only state that does this but Yeah And they will give it to illegal the children of illegal immigrants if they're born here

47:07

That's why you see all of this motivation to come here because we have that birthright citizenship, which is not that is not constitutional

47:14

I know there's debates about that, but that is not what the founders intended Right.

47:19

So yes What's the question Oh a deacon a deacon

47:30

Great question a Deacon is an officer of the church. So sort of like a pastor or an elder a deacon.

47:39

However More specifically focuses on on administrating the church. So they often focus on man is managing the finances of the church or also on distributing mercy ministry so like money or or goods to those in need to the people in the church primarily and also to you know, the poor and because it's like the

48:03

Bible says we should look out for that's one of the the the that's one of the the

48:10

The goals or the missions of the church. It's not all just spiritual right the the the

48:18

Bible says that hey They are when when Paul was helping out of church the church

48:24

I think had encouraged him to not forget the poor and Paul said he was eager to help them Right, so we should be willing to help the poor help the less fortunate whatever and you know the less less fortunate

48:35

That's not even a biblical phrase because fortune is a replacement for God. But anyway sorry

48:42

But that's really where a lot of this Comes comes at a

48:49

Plate and this this goes into all kinds of different directions and there there's other things that I really want to discuss as well

48:58

I'll close it for now for the few things. Yeah good Yes Uh -huh

49:31

Exactly exactly Yeah Yeah yeah, and that's one of the things where the focus of government should be only to praise the good and punish evil doers but when you start adding all of these other programs and welfare and education what that does is that that Spreads the government into areas that they shouldn't belong in and now they're not doing their real job, right?

50:20

correctly Because their money is being funneled through all of these other different things that they shouldn't be doing as opposed to properly having a good

50:30

You know good criminal justice system judges police force Military whatever to help us to have those things in proper order.

50:40

So yeah, and and the other thing too is that like When it comes to these things, that's why

50:46

I want us. I want to help us and equip us to become less dependent independent from the government

50:52

By doing these kinds of things and by also looking into precious metals and getting your money out of the bank as much as possible

50:59

Because the banks are all federally controlled You know when you see that the government that the bank is

51:06

FDIC insured Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. I think that's what it stands for. What that means is that the government

51:14

Insures your money in case it's lost for some whatever reason I for certain reasons and they insure up to $250 ,000

51:23

I think of your money the problem with that is that the government has has control of the banks and they they can take your money at a moment's notice whenever they want because Banks are really federal institutions

51:40

They are not Banks in the way that you think they are and a lot of banks that are irresponsible

51:48

Also participate in what's called fractional reserve Spending I think it's called spending or lending because what they do is you put your money in the bank

51:58

But then they start loaning that money out For loans and mortgages and whatever and so the money you think you have in the bank.

52:07

You don't actually have in the bank and so if there is ever a bank run which there probably will be because there's if you've seen the news a bunch of banks are

52:15

Closing down because they're they weren't managing their finances responsibly and now the government is starting to end all of these

52:24

These programs where they they buy banks they they they basically Help banks who are who are not doing financially well, and those programs are over now

52:35

So many banks are closing and more will close so that's where we have to be extremely careful and Have as little money in the bank as possible

52:47

Now I don't I don't also is you know is it good to have cash on hand yes It's good to have cash on hand a certain amount of money of cash on hand in small denominations

52:59

That can be helpful, but really the best way to preserve your wealth would be to get precious metals

53:05

That would be my recommendation. That's what we're doing. We're taking our money. We've taken our money most of it out of the bank and We're trying to put it in somewhere that it will actually preserve

53:17

The value because the money the money is the dollars eventually it's it's not going to last very long

53:24

So that's really important to also understand that the banking system is a totally criminal system it is so corrupt and I want to encourage y 'all to join the me we group because I've been posting several videos on that Dr..

53:42

Kirk Elliott, and he provides precious metal services for and even a

53:48

Financial guidance so like he'll literally hold your hand, and he says hey, okay right now

53:54

It's a good time to buy silver, so let's buy some silver buy whatever silver you can okay. You know what now

54:00

Silver starting to catch up in its in its a value in its relation to gold so now

54:06

Let's start swapping out that silver for gold so he walks you through the whole process of Where to put your money your your your your real money in and it's very helpful

54:19

We started using him Recently as well, and he's been very helpful So that those are resources that I wanted to expose us to and make us aware of so that we can

54:31

We can avoid these Impending disasters that are just they're already coming

54:38

And you can also look up your bank rating on a website. I think it's called Weiss Weiss ratings it's on me we

54:45

I've put all this stuff up on me that you can check out and I was a little disappointed because some of some of our banks didn't get a very good rating

54:55

So that's another thing to look at as well because if your bank is not being financially responsible It's going to close.

55:01

It's only a matter of time before it closes, and it's already happening right so sorry sister. Do you have a question? Yes Yeah, that's the problem

55:43

That that's that's the problem with that's why socialism is a problem because socialism is taking the money from the haves and giving it to the have -nots and Really what that does is that there's no socialist country on the earth that has ever been successful because it always has the same problems and true prosperity comes with Freedom it comes with having a certain amount of freedom to use your money

56:18

In ways that you would want to use it as opposed to being forced to pay for something that you're not even

56:24

That you don't even need or want Right, so that's that's the whole problem with a socialist type system

56:32

Which we basically have we are a welfare society and that has destroyed our country's wealth and our ability to build maintain and preserve wealth because We've got property.

56:45

You know if you want to buy a piece of property here It's almost like you're not you don't really own it because you have to pay thousands of dollars a prop you know, we were looking at a house a beautiful house on the

56:57

Northeast and But we couldn't we couldn't do it because it was seven thousand dollars a year

57:04

Just in property taxes alone. It's like no. Thanks. No. Thank you.

57:10

I don't want to be a slave That's what serfdom is you become a slave to your own property. You don't really own it, right?

57:17

So yeah, go ahead Yeah It's ridiculous

57:34

Yeah It's ridiculous, yeah, that's why we're

57:44

Yeah, it's one of the highest in the nation one of the highest in the nation and You that's why we were more tempted to look in New Mexico because they have much lower and you're in the taxes

57:55

Don't go up. They only they are set when you buy the house They're set at that point they don't go up so it's much it's a much better way of You can you're you're you have more control of your property there

58:12

So, yeah, that's that's it's criminal. It's just criminal. Yes. Good question.

58:23

So with with silver and gold What you used to be able to to go to a bank and you could take your dollars and trade them in for for gold now

58:36

Gold is no longer used as a means of exchange in our country but Gold can easily be converted to dollars so if you ever want to like for example, if you if you buy some some precious metals from I don't know what you call them precious a dealer

58:57

I think they're called precious metals dealers and You say well, you know what? I want to take some out.

59:03

I want to take some $10 ,000 out and so they will

59:09

They can write you a check for $10 ,000 Convert that that amount of gold into dollars and send it to you and that's why

59:19

I really like dr. Kirk Elliott because He charges a percent of what you invest in up front

59:26

But he charges you nothing when you want to liquidate. So if you want to take your money out, it's free there's no charge for taking it out and that's typically much better for for you because When you take the money out is typically because the value has gone up the value of the metals has gone up So that's really good.

59:45

And one thing I forgot to explain as well is that well There are something called what Mike Maloney calls

59:52

Wealth cycles and I highly recommend that everybody checks out Mike Maloney series on the hidden secrets of money it's on YouTube and Mike Maloney talks about how there's wealth cycles and These wealth cycles are very predictable and in certain ways

01:00:07

Because when when certain things are going well other things are not going are not doing good

01:00:13

So when When the stock market is doing well When when those things are doing well real estate is also typically doing well and then precious metals

01:00:24

Typically are not doing that. Well But when those things are inflated or high

01:00:33

There's an inverse relationship there in other words so right now We're basically at a point in time

01:00:40

Where we are so inflated and the economy the the market is so inflated right now it's about to burst and what that means is that things are overvalued the real estate is overvalued and The stock market is overvalued because of the inflation of the dollar so what that's gonna means what that's gonna mean is that when the when the when the

01:01:07

When it the bubble starts to pop It the inverse will happen the value of precious metals and hard assets will tend to go up and Then everything else will come crashing down That's why right now is a good time to get into precious metals because they're affordable.

01:01:26

They're affordable. They're cheap, especially silver and You can get into that while it's affordable and then ride out the wave so that when it gets up you can you can have a

01:01:40

Significant amount of wealth built up because that transfer of wealth results because the government's

01:01:46

Manipulate the economy through printing money and they should have no power to do that whatsoever

01:01:52

Government should not control money so That's when bad things happen.

01:01:58

Yes You yeah, well if you have nothing to lose and you have nothing to lose

01:02:17

But You can But but but but you can

01:02:26

You can you can you can practice these principles to save little by little a little bit at a time

01:02:33

And you can still build up something so that you can Have have some level of preparation is better than none and And In any case that's why

01:02:46

I also want us to have this as a church because as a church we need we want to take care of each other and Provide for each other as needed not not not abusively.

01:02:57

Obviously, we don't want to abuse that every man If you don't work, you don't eat right you got up you have to work

01:03:05

You have to be diligent and take care of yourself and your family But at the same time when we fall on hard times, it's it's good for it's good to turn to the church rather than to the government

01:03:17

That's something that I want us to do to promote right, so That's important as well.

01:03:24

Yes It's gone

01:03:41

It's gone It's gone. It is fact. It's already not there

01:03:47

So that's why if you have a bank run if you have a bank run is when Everybody starts going and tries to take their money out.

01:03:55

That's happened before when that if that happens That when everybody tries to take their money out the bank won't have the money because they've loaned it out

01:04:05

And so they're not going to be able to give people their money So that it's gonna the bank was gonna collapse and you're gonna lose your money

01:04:13

Because the bank didn't do a good job of managing it So that's really important.

01:04:25

Yeah, it's happened a number of times. Yeah, if that has happened before and it's very ugly when it does and it's going to start happening again probably because banks

01:04:37

Yeah. Yeah, because banks are shutting down like crazy like create like never before So, yep

01:05:02

Yep Mm -hmm

01:05:37

I think the Texas legislature did pass a law, or they were working on passing a law, where you can actually use coins and metals as currency.

01:05:48

Bullion, yeah. Yeah, I don't know if anybody's doing that yet, but our governor knows what's coming, and I think he's trying to prepare us for this.

01:05:56

Yeah, yeah, so... Because China's already doing that, right? That's right. They're buying up all the precious metals.

01:06:02

They're already doing that. They're hoarding it because they know. They know what's happening. They know what's going on.

01:06:07

Wow. And they're encouraging their people to buy it up, too. So, one of the...

01:06:12

But here's the thing. Well, here's the thing. So, what

01:06:18

I want to get us to look at more carefully is, we may think we don't have money, a lot of money, but you might have more than you think.

01:06:29

What I mean by that is, you might be spending too much on cell phones, or on, you know, cable, or on insurance.

01:06:39

So, that's what I want us to look at more as well. Finding a good insurance provider.

01:06:45

Like, I use the one that Dave Ramsey endorses, which is Zander Insurance. We've had very good success with that, with those companies, and they provide all kinds of quotes for all kinds of stuff.

01:06:56

So, look at those things. If you're paying too much, you know, you shouldn't be paying more than, like, 20 bucks a line for your cell phone bill.

01:07:06

That just... You shouldn't really have to be paying hundreds of dollars for things like that.

01:07:13

There are ways to find, to cut costs like that, that really free up your paycheck.

01:07:19

Because those are monthly expenses, right? Everybody typically has them. So, finding ways to cut the cost on those things, finding better insurance, finding better service providers, like cell phone, internet, whatever.

01:07:34

You know, we've been trying to be very diligent about those things. We only pay 40 bucks a month.

01:07:41

Yeah, 40 bucks a month for both of our cell phones. And we pay 25 bucks a month for our internet.

01:07:47

You know, so we... You find ways to cut those things down, and we can even do it as a church, right?

01:07:57

We can, hey, let's start a family plan. And, you know, with 10 people, it'll cost 10 bucks a line, right?

01:08:03

So, you know, that's part of how we can make this work for all of us, by doing things like that and helping us cut those costs down.

01:08:12

Because you'll be surprised at how much you could save. You really could save a lot of money doing simple things like that.

01:08:19

And use them for other things that you can build wealth in and stuff like that. Yes? Good question.

01:08:28

So that's actually a good question, because I remember listening to Dr.

01:08:33

Kirk Elliott's interview. He said that he tried to take money out for a vacation. He tried to take out, like, $3 ,000 for a vacation that they went to, and the bank didn't have the money.

01:08:46

They couldn't give him the cash. Yeah, we're... It's scary.

01:08:52

It's scary. So that's why I want to bring this stuff to our attention, so we can start taking measures now, before it's too late, before the point of no return happens, and we cross that Rubicon.

01:09:06

It's already... We're very close to that already. But you can start taking a look at those things now.

01:09:14

And we'll keep talking about this. We'll keep reviewing these things and finding smart, wise strategies for protecting our wealth, our investments, and away from the government hands, because they always find a way to take this stuff away from you.

01:09:38

But there are really good strategies that we can implement as individuals to help to protect ourselves from those things.

01:09:49

Right? So that's really key. Okay? Anything else before we close up?

01:10:02

All righty. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

01:10:09

Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

01:10:19

Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

01:10:24

If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries, such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcasts, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com.