Treaure Principle - Debt Free

By Pastor Christian on 6/1/09

This Sunday we completed our three-week series based on the book “The Treasure Principle” by Randy Alcorn. This short run has turned out to be as challenging and culture shaping as we had ever anticipated. We genuinely hope you have enjoyed it. If you missed any portion, please visit our Archives page and catch-up.

This week Pastor Brandon Beals “closed the book” by urging us to live Debt Free. In three words: It was GOOD. I laughed, I groaned, I re-committed myself to clearing my world of unsecured debt.

I believed in the virtue of debt free living. I believed in benefits. But, the truly key moment for me was when Brandon shared the corporate statistics of our debt – as you heard, the people of Canyon Creek Church have roughly 8-million dollars in unsecured debt. $8,000,000.00! Dude. Like Brandon said, that is $80,000.00 per month in interest alone! At that very moment, I joined Brandon in wondering what this church could do with 80-thousand dollars per month. Whose life could we change? What impact could we make in this community, how would we spread the gospel without spending one penny more?

You, like me, may have even begun to let yourself imagine what these numbers would look like extrapolated across the tens of millions of families in just the American church. If just 350 families have 8 million dollars in debt (@ 27k per family), then 10 million families (a fraction of total) would have roughly $270,000,000,000.00 in debt. That is 270 BILLION dollars or $32,400,000,000.00 dollars in interest payments per year alone or TWO BILLION SEVEN HUNDERED THOUSAND DOLLARS PER MONTH in wasted interest payments.

Ah! What could we do if we just didn’t have debt?!

So, you may be like me – convinced. Brandon did a great job. But you may be stuck between a debt and a hard truth. Some of you can start implementing the rules tomorrow and be on your way to debt free living and more eternal Kingdom impact. But, some of you just simply are not be able. You are broke and a long way from the right path. For that reason, I emphasize one additional idea to Brandon’s excellent sermon – positive progress.

That’s all, positive progress. Sometimes our goals and our current status are so far apart that the distance actually paralyzes us. We just stand there, persisting in the same behavior, despairing over the great distance to our goals. To that paralysis, I offer this singular hope – positive progress.

You don’t have to fix everything tomorrow. If you can begin to obey the 70 % rule tomorrow – excellent, do it. If just can’t, no way, no how. It might as well be the 20 % rule, then I beg you do something. Take a step, get started, make positive progress. If you do nothing the problem only gets worse and the despair deeper. Do something, celebrate the small victories, keep you eye on the goal - its immensely encouraging. As Brandon suggested on Sunday, if you will make a plan, and work that plan, the rest will start to come together.

So, don’t stand there wishing you could apply these good rules. Get started at 100% of your capacity. You will get there, and when you do you will have the habits to carry you into a life of Debt Free Living.

Peace,

Christian

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