Money's Impact on Decisions

• Choose 10 things you'd love to buy right now. Write them down.
• I will give each of you $100. What can you buy? What can you not buy? What do you want most? What are you willing to give up? Why? Is there a way you can get it all? Likely there isn't.

• List out the last 10 things you purchased (on Google Classroom)
  • Why did you purchase those things? What value did they provide? Did you have to sacrifice to buy any of those items?
  • Were any of the items you purchased needs? Or were they wants? Do we know the difference?

When our 'thinking' about money isn't right, it points to a deeper issue -- there are serious battles for our devotion and our heart.

"Your Lord talked about these issues so often, because he knows well the power and importance of money. He knows the significance of this heart battle. He knows we are easily seduced. When it comes to money, he knows how quickly we can lose our way. He knows that we are susceptible to giving the love of our hearts to money. And if we listen to our Lord, we know that this is a conversation we need to have."

The sad reality is, most people (Christians included) don't want to have those conversations. People don't want to think deeply into their spending, financial decisions and choices they make with their money. Why is that? Because it's hard! When we evaluate our decisions and why we make them, it shows what we value, and what we don't value... which can sometimes contradict what we allowed ourselves to believe.

• Write down the things you value, the things most important to you.
• Now, write down what consumes your time.
• Next, write down what consumes your money.
• Where do you see inconsistencies...?

Very often when we don't slow down and take time to think, we don't realize what truly consumes our time and money. Further, we don't realize how what does consume our time and money is not what we claim (or want to value). But all of these factors impact our decisions.

Four things work together to "soften" the heart for problems. These four things allow the heart to do what must never be done with money: love it. What are these things?

• Ingratitude
• Need
• Discontentment
• Envy

Ingratitude:

"The first is ingratitude. A grateful heart is a heart at rest. A grateful person is aware that he deserves nothing of all he possesses and enjoys. Because of this, he daily counts his blessings and is thankful for the little things that would otherwise be taken for granted. The unthankful person does just the opposite. He keeps telling himself that he deserves more than he has. Because of this, he is way more aware of what he doesn’t yet have than of all the things he has been graciously given. This causes him to live an entitled and demanding life. Never quite satisfied, he easily justifies a wasteful and selfish use of money."

Need:

"The second ingredient is need. This is one of the most poorly and overused words in human culture. The majority of what we are able to tell ourselves we need, we don’t actually need. We all are very skilled at loading our desires into our need category, and once we have, we think it’s our right to have these things, and therefore it’s appropriate to do what is necessary to posses them. So we waste all kinds of money satisfying needs that aren’t really needs, all the while feeling quite comfortable, because if it’s a need, it seems right to acquire it. So with closets bursting with more clothes than we can wear and refrigerators filled with more than we can eat and houses bigger than we actually occupy, we are still able to tell ourselves that we are needy. And because we have told ourselves that we are needy, we will spend more."

Discontentment:

"Along with ingratitude and need, there is a third thing that weakens the defenses of the heart against the love of money: discontentment. Because I am not grateful for all the things I have been given and don’t deserve, and because I have misdiagnosed need, loading many things in my need category that are not needs, I am a constantly discontented person. It is virtually impossible to be satisfied with what I have, so I am on a constant quest for more. Since I am on a constant quest for more, I tend to spend more than I should to satisfy myself, but because my discontentment is rooted in ingratitude and misunderstood need, spending more won’t solve my problem. So, I end up spending more than I have, because what I am trying to do can’t work. Contentment isn’t a money problem, a possession problem, or a location problem; it’s a problem of the heart and therefore is not solved by spending."

Envy:

"The final ingredient that works with ingratitude, need, and discontentment to set up your heart to misappropriate money is envy. If you are unthankful and convinced that you deserve more, if you have been able to convince yourself that you need certain things that you do not have, leaving you deeply discontented, you will invariably look over the fence and envy the person who appears to have what you have not yet been able to acquire. Envious people are always taking account. Envious people are always comparing. Envious people are constantly placing things on their “she has, but I don’t” list. Envious people regularly feel that they have been given a bad deal, so it is right for them to use their resources to settle the score. Envy will cause you to be both self-oriented and foolish in your use of money."

So all of those things impact our thinking about money. And our thinking about money impacts our decisions, choices and actions we take with money.

The harsh reality is that money is an accurate window on what is truly important to us. We have a dangerous tendency to assign increasing importance to things beyond their true importance. If you're humbly willing to look, your desires for and use of money will help you see what is battling for the rulership of your heart.

Money can also allow us to have a self-centered way of living that acts as if nothing is greater than 'myself' and nothing is more important than my personal wants, needs & feelings.

So you must ask yourself not does money affect my decisions, but HOW does money affect my decisions? You must ask YOURSELF this because it is not necessarily the same for each individual. It takes honest evaluation, reflection and willingness to admit you've made mistakes.