Strange one this. I was thinking the other day that my life story had some similarities with the ideas that Robert Kiyosaki expressed in Rich Dad Poor Dad. This was because he was able to express the differences between the ideas and expectations expressed by two men in his life. In his case this happened concurrently as a young man watching and learning from his own father (his poor dad) and his best friend’s father (his rich dad). In my case it was being around tw0 men in my life concurrently, so it has taken a me a lot longer to learn which one best suited me.
In my case, each man gave me away into a new legal situation in relation to them. Oh dear that sounds very feudal and as if I had no choice. I did have choices it is just that I made some bad choices and I had to take the consequences. It has taken time to recover from those wrong choices. It took time but it has become increasingly obvious that in a variety of areas, including handling money, that the ideas of one reflected Godly principles more closely than the other. I am not saying perfection as neither of them is God but that one better demonstrated godly principles in their life.
Its called learning the hard way by trial and error. I look around and I see many people trying to survive financially while living according to the ideas and principles that I now shudder to believe that I ever could have accepted. Problem was I was carried along by a stream of ideas that sounded OK but on reflection were not right. I did not know that borrowing money was seen as an inadvisable practise in the bible. I did not know about ideas like diligence, buying and selling, God helping you create wealth,
More about spiritual aspects
The day that I wrote this I heard someone speak about their style of building a business. It shook me as it was straight from the dark side. How someone let their weird side come into their business and make them a fortune. They developed their experiences of what I would call occult practises into a business and this was promoted as a good idea. In fact those who did not have anything that they could draw on from the dark spiritual side were the strange ones. I was so sad. I knew the light side had something to say about building businesses as well but it seems to be a closely guarded secret.
My bible says that God gives his people the ability to create wealth. Look at Abraham Issac and Jacob. They each had strategies that helped them survive when others around them struggled. Proverbs talks about people being given witty inventions. Surely a God who knows everything and speaks to his children can give them business ideas and will support them as they build businesses.
Speak about money in the church and you are told to go and find a job or to seek advice about how much more you can claim in benefit rather than what you can make from some kind of business enterprise. Then of course you are told that the reason why you do not have enough is because you are not giving enough i.e. tithing. There is an element of truth in that in that we told to chase after doing what God wants us to do and He will make sure that we have everything that we need. What if doing what God wants us to do is to take advantage of an opportunity of solving a problem that people have by setting up a business? Couldn’t He reward people stepping out to do this with money? Classic Jewish wisdom says that this is the case. Yet the church shrinks back from encouraging people from setting up businesses partly because of the fear that money will control people.
Yet when there are few jobs how can people find the money they need to survive? Benefits go up once a year but food prices go up multiple times a year. This week I was taken aback by the price of sugar in my local store. In the space of a couple of weeks it had gone up 27%. This is not the only basic food that has shot up in price in recent months, flour has as well.. Then there are figures repeated by the BBC about what is seen as the poverty line. For a single person with no children this was stated as being £165 a week but many on benefits are expected to live on £67 a week. Yes most do get help to pay their rent and council tax which brings them much closer to the poverty line but even this still may not take them over it. No wonder people are struggling to survive.
What is the biblical response to this situation?
Remember the widow who was in debt who spoke to Elisha in 2 Kings chapter 4? She was asked what she had in the house. She only had some oil and she was given instructions on how to multiply it. Once it multiplied she was able to sell it and repay her debts and have enough left over to live on. What does that have to do with someone on benefits? What do they have in their hand that with God’s help can be multiplied? Notice that the widow was given a strategy that included doing something positive for herself i.e. pouring the oil, gathering pots and selling the oil. It must have taken courage to start pouring out that oil but the relief when it kept going until all the pots were filled must have been immense. It must have taken nerve to go round to ask the neighbours for pots. It must have taken a certain amount of skill and ability to sell the oil at the market. Yet she was not given something to do that was beyond her ability. No handouts here but a practical strategy that worked!
What strategies can we direct people to?
What can we do to help people find these strategies? Remember the saying that is used by some aid agencies that if you give someone a fish you feed them for a day and if you teach them how to fish you feed them for a lifetime. Give someone a food parcel and you feed them for a day or two if you help them put more money in their pocket you help them survive in the long term. So why are we not doing more to point people to ways that they can help themselves by taking responsibility for themselves rather than just showing them where to find handouts? After all in other parts of the world it is seen as a good idea to teach people the skills needed to run a business or to provide them with a starter kit to set them up in a small business why not do this closer to home?
We do not know where to find suitable strategies. Yet we know a God who can help us if we ask Him the right questions. We believe that by giving people handouts we are doing all that is necessary to help them. Yet we see that by giving to people without giving them a strategy to change the situation leads to them becoming more dependent on handouts so they sit back and don’t do anything to change their own situation. The bible teaches that if a man does not work he should not eat but the church is to care for widows and orphans. In other words men without a job should be shown a strategy that will help them earn money in whatever situation they find themselves in. Yes even if they face medical issues or disability challenges there is often something that they can do to earn money.
We believe that nothing can be done in the current climate and are waiting and hoping for things to improve. Yet it is only by people setting up businesses and helping to circulate money around the economy that the effects of the recession will be lessened. We are scared to advise people to go this route because we know that the failure rate for new enterprises is very high. Yet there are ways and means of reducing that failure rate and sometimes people need to fail for a time or two before they succeed. In fact if you look at the background of successful entrepreneurs you will find it is very rare for them not to have had at least one failure that they have needed to recover from.
It is such a radical idea for the church to get involved in helping people make money that we wonder if we should be doing it. Look at it this way. If we are supposed to be becoming more Christ-like and He was involved in His family’s construction business then developing business skills will help us become more like Him in a way that we might not have thought about before.
What next?
OK you are persuaded that this is something that you should be getting involved in but you know that there are just not enough hours in the day to do what is necessary to make a success of such a project. After all it means developing a body of knowledge that you probably have not even considered before. So much easier to pass people on to another source of help. Yet the locally-based secular sources of support are drying up and some of the online materials are so closely related to the dark side that they should carry a health warning.
What can you do instead? Our response to these issues is to develop two consecutive programs. First is the Bridge2Riches programme which aims to give a vision for what is possible. How can you move from financial ollapse to financial security? Second is Making Money in the Parlour. The aim of this is to provide ideas and support for those who want to practise their business skills be setting up a home based micro enterprise. The idea of starting small is that it gives the opportunity to learn the required skills but without risking a great deal of money in the process. Skills that can be used to develop that business into a larger one or to develop a different but larger business. The desire behind of both of these programmes is to stay as close to God’s heart and to follow His design as closely as possible.
Both these programmes start with books and from that core material a variety of learning materials will be developed. Most of these learning materials will be used in workshop sessions that could be face to face or they could be online it depending on the needs of those joining them. A series of online workshops would be converted to a web site accessed by members of the group and would be available for use by those who join the programme at a later date. The aim would be to develop a supportive community using a variety of online resources such as a closed Facebook group or a members only blog as well as hold regular e meetings.
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