Budgeting or Spirituality? Which is the more powerful force that can change your life? Is it by budgeting your money? Or is it building a relationship with God?
Recently, I have been pondering these two subjects. Budgeting and spirituality are two of the most significant forces that can change your life. But which one is more powerful? Which one is the greater change agent? And if you really want to super-charge your life, how do you combine the power of budgeting, with the power of a personal relationship with God, to totally revolutionize the way you interact with life?
An awesome conversation with a friend recently inspired these thoughts in my head. This is how our conversation started:
“Bill, you have to check out this finance app I found. It’s awesome.” She showed me the Every Dollar App on her phone. Then she looked at me, “But you’re like the king of budgeting, so maybe you don’t need it.”
I looked at the app. I always love learning new things, even if I think I am good at something.
“I can’t be that great at budgeting, if I don’t even use a budget.” I replied.
“How do you budget and save then?” She asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess I really don’t know. I just do it all in my head. My brain is like a ledger of debts and assets, and I just do my best to balance it all. I’m usually not far off.”
Our conversation then moved on to other things. But as I left our meeting, that conversation stuck with me for days. It made me ask myself: If I don’t even use a budget, then how in the heck am I good at saving money? I wanted to find the answer. If it’s not the budget, what has been the source of my success in life?
My thoughts traveled deeper. Understanding the answers to our WHY’S in life, are often the most important answers to discovering who we are, and what we are meant to do.
I mean, it’s not like I am totally oblivious to following a budget. I kind of budget. At all times I know what my base-essential expenses are each month, and my logic is to just try to stay as close to that number as I can. For example: It costs my wife and I about $2000 a month to live in our house, buy food, put gas in our cars, pay for insurance, etc. I just try to keep our spending as close to that $2000 number as I can. If we spend $30,000 a year, but make $50,000. Then we can save and invest $20,000 at the end of the year. Saving is good. Saving buys freedom. Saving buys new paths to find happiness and your purpose in life. Wasteful spending is bad. Wasteful spending steals opportunities for you to find happiness and freedom. Life is more fun when you have enough money to be content and don’t have to worry about money. My financial logic hasn’t been much deeper than that.
But I kept thinking: If I don’t follow a rigid budget, then what else do I do? There must be more. What other decisions do I make? I thought about it deeper, and the answers started to come to me.
I realized that when I want to spend money on something special, I simply talk to God about it, and ask him, “Is this smart to spend my money on?”
Bam!!!! That’s when the insight started to hit me!!!! I instantly saw the deeper roots to all my success!!!
My budgeting skills have NOT been the source of my success. My success has come from the way I talk to God and invite him into every financial and life decision I make.
My style of budgeting isn’t a one-dimensional spreadsheet. The budgeting style that works for me is more like a three-dimensional conversation and examination of myself, my expenses, and my relationship with God.
Personally, when I look to spend money, I look at many factors beyond my budget. I also look to God. I spend as much time talking to God about what I should do with my money, as I do looking at my bills, paychecks, and budget.
As I examined my decision-making process, I suddenly saw my money-management style so clearly. My success with money hasn’t come from my ability to create a perfect budget. Instead, all my success has come from my ability to create an awesome relationship with God, and then trust God when he gives me the insights on how to make the best decisions in my life. Great life decisions will almost always lead you to opportunities to create wealth.
This revelation inspired me to write about the three best ways you can incorporate God into your thinking, spending, and decision-making. Ultimately, I credit all of my wealth, success, and happiness to my relationship with God. I hope you can use these tips to find similar peace, happiness, and wealth in your life.
How to Build a relationship with God Step #1: Simply Talk to God.
Simply start building your relationship by being vulnerable and talking to God. You can never build a relationship until you start talking. Ask God the deepest questions you have about life, the universe, and yourself. And then just be patient and wait for the insightful responses that start flying around in your mind. God’s voice will be in there.
Be fearless with your questions when talking to God. Ask God: What should you do? What sacrifices should you make? How do you become the best, most-skilled version of yourself? What actions do you have to take to create the best life for yourself?
Your budget can’t tell you the answers to these questions. But God can. Find what you’re looking for in life by talking to God more, and asking him to lead you into the adventure to find yourself and the life you dream of. The greatest adventures to wealth all begin by giving your life to God first. Have faith that God can show you where to go.
How to Build a Relationship with God Step #2: Simply Listen to God.
Once you are comfortable asking God your deepest questions about life, learn how to listen for the answers to those questions. Listen to your consciousness. Listen to the world around you. Watch your reality move around you. What is God trying to say to you? Look for clues. Seek God’s invisible hands, and voice. Seek the deepest revelations in all of the mysterious landscapes of life. At all times, search for what God is trying to show you.
I personally have never heard God’s audible voice in my life, but I have faith that I hear him whenever new thoughts enter my mind. God is here in the physical world with us. Let God guide you through your life. Let God be the one to tell you when to save, spend, or enjoy your money. Learn to trust God more than you do your own instincts in life. If you trust God more than you do yourself, he can help you become stronger, smarter, and more ambitious than you could ever be on your own.
How to Build a Relationship with God #3: Invite God into Every Decision You make.
If you want to succeed on a massive and amazing scale, it’s best to invite a force as powerful as God into your life to help you. I am convinced that God knows what we should do with our lives much more than we know what to do with our lives. I am also convinced God’s power is infinitely more powerful than ours. If you’re going to live your dreams in life, you’re going to need all of the power you can get on your side. Asking God to join you on your journey through life is a great first step.
Become partners with God in your life. Invite him into every decision you make. Evaluate every purchase and financial decision you make with awakened, spiritual eyes. Is this purchase going to help you become a better Warrior? Are you going to need that purchase to achieve your purpose in life?
Do you want to spend money, just because you want to, with no point or reason? If that’s the case, then that money is probably better off being saved. But if God is telling you to spend that money because it’s going to help you learn, experience, and grow into the person you were meant to become, then that money SHOULD be spent as it’s an investment in yourself, dreams, and life.
In conclusion, I wrote this post to be an inspiration to you. You don’t have to do it all on your own. I don’t. The only reason I am here succeeding, is because I devoted my entire life to building a relationship with God. God helped me make the best decisions I could, and creating wealth was the result of those decisions. Find God, make Good decisions, and wealthy experiences will be created as a result.
Your budget isn’t going to solve all your problems. Personally, I don’t like budgeting because a budget is always there telling me, “No.” I don’t like to be told “No” in life, and that’s why I give all of my control over to God. Because God is always there telling me “Yes” to do the right things in life. I like the encouragement of being told, “Yes, do the right thing,” from my relationship with God, alot more than I like hearing, “No, you can’t do that” from my budget.
Your budget can only help keep you on track with your money. But God can lead you everywhere else. Personally, I have found that seeking God is the best investment of my time and money. The biggest achievement in life is finding yourself, and living the life your soul dreams about. The first step to accomplishing this feat is by discovering God.
The wealthiest people in the world are the people whose souls are filled with the most purpose, meaning, and opportunities to do what God is calling them to do with their life. Utilize the power of a budget to save up a war chest of cash. But ask God to help you find yourself, and embrace his power so you can accomplish the dreams your soul dreams of living. Building a relationship with God is the best way to wealth I can recommend.
So what do you think? What is a bigger change-agent in your life? A budget? Or a spiritual relationship with God? Or have you also found a way to combine both powers — God, and a budget — to create the life you dream of?
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“Learn to trust God more than you do your own instincts in life.” That is such a powerful statement. I have read it 3 times and it is still sinking in. While it is very simple to understand, it is so difficult to accomplish because our pride gets in the way. Great insight, brother, great insight.
So happy you stopped in to comment, and I am beyond honored that you have read it 3 times. From the author’s perspective, it was just as challenging to write. It was a such a simple concept in my brain like you said to: “Lean to trust God more than you do your own instincts in life.” But to put that idea into a coherent article was incredibly difficult. I probably wrote 3-4 drafts of it to get it out of me. I am so glad that it was able to communicate to you clearly. Destroying my pride, and just following God, has probably one of the biggest sources of all the wealth I am creating. That’s the stuff I love to explore and write about. Thank you, thank you, thank you for making me feel like I am not alone on this journey to figure life out.
All our talents and money are His anyway. I see it that we are stewards of these things, to be used for a variety of reasons but to serve our own needs and at the same time serving the greater good. I do believe that we are individuals and should be proud of our individuality, but collectively, I think the financially independent Christian world can do a lot of good. I see humans and a hybrid of collectivism and individualism.
I think about the interplay between money and religion a lot, but it’s a complex issue, especially want to comes to donation and how much exactly we should give. Should I make myself for poor and financially dependant for others because I have the ability to earn more? I say no. I believe in the philosophies of Christian writings and some atheist writing. Ayn Rand and CS Lewis clash on many issues. I guess it’s part of being human, ambiguity and contrast.
Your post brings up a lot of hard questions but it’s insightful. I’m with you, I’m not a budget maker. I just don’t think breaking it down to single dollars is worth thetime. Like you, I paint with broad strokes and have general principles and this has worked fine for me. Plus, there’s a higher power behind my decisions which I trust so I just have much less anxiety about the day-to-day financial issues.
Man this is an insightful and awesome comment, and I am beyond honored that you left it. Your comment is helping me discover deeper motivations in myself. I love your metaphor of being good at the “broad strokes” in life, and not necessarily caught up in the tiny details. Personally, I don’t like a budget because I don’t like to be told by a budget that I can’t do something even if I have the money. I want to do whatever God tells me to do, even if it doesn’t fall perfectly into a monthly spending category. That’s why I have learned to trust God much more than my budget, and that faith and strategy has worked great for me.
And yes giving is a complex issue. I struggle with it as I pursue financial independence. I mean, I personally dream of being a Bill Gates or Warren Buffet and amassing so much money that I will be able to give the majority of it away one day. That’s my motivation for collecting all of these cash-flowing assets right now, and holding on to my money so it can compound, during these building years of my life. I want my assets to pay for massive amounts of giving eventually. However, I am part of an awesome church and I know they have bills to keep the lights on, and salaries to keep their staff together, so I try to remind myself that supporting them is part of creating my happiness in life. And I know they support alot more people, so it’s good for everyone.
Ultimately like you said, all of our talents and money are his anyways, so I do believe it’s part of our responsibility to share these things with all of God’s children all around the world. Thanks for the cool comment.
Wow. Just, wow. I’m floored by this blog. I struggle with different things that keep me away from God. Ironically it’s my job that pays extremely well that is my stumbling block. The stress causes me to react less than godly, so much that I feel God is ashamed of me. So I hide my face from him. Forgetting that it’s for wretched people like me who He came for. My upbringing as a tough guy in brooklyn doesn’t help my instinct to hit first and ask questions later. Anyway, I love the concept of involving God in all financial decisions. I will be implementing it. Keep up the good work.
Awesome post Bill!
My whole life has been about figuring out how to give up my natural “need for control” and give it all over to God. Every time I’ve truly handed things over to him, I’ve found peace and my life has improved in ways I wouldn’t have been able to achieve by following my own path.
I love the thought of asking God what he thinks about purchases – this is an area in my life I can really work on. You’ve got my head spinning on this; I had been treating money as an “earthly concern” but really everything is in God’s realm.
Thanks for connecting the dots for me!
Very timely article for our family. We have just recently retired and started attending a great church in our area. I feel much closer to God than during most of my life and have started talking to him again. I had not thought about asking him questions about financial decisions, including how much of my limited income to give to the church.
Thank you for the insight and the urging to ask God about many things, including financial questions.
I have been fretting over spreadsheets instead of praying for guidance.
Everything you said was so powerful, and your words meant alot to me.
Money is all God’s creation too, so like you said, always seek his guidance on what you should do with it when he blesses you with it.
Between us, I totally understand your internal struggle with giving money to your church as I struggle with that too.
We haven’t been great tithers this year because we bought an investment property that pretty much cleared all of our emergency fund cash out of our account so we’ve been diligently building that back up.
Our church is doing a fundraiser on Friday that we’re preparing to give for. I don’t naturally like to give as I am an aggressive saver, but I’ve been praying about it and God’s just been telling me to have faith and help the church out because the church has helped me out, so that’s what I am going to do.
It’s not about how much you give, or being perfect. It’s all about talking to God as much as you can and just doing what he prompts in your heart. When he prompts you to do something, just have faith, do it to the best of your ability, and be smart about it.
If you can do that consistently, you’ll be amazed by how awesome your life will become.
God bless, and thanks for the awesome comment.
Bill