Episodi

  • “...if the Lord is with you, you can fly.”

    “...if the Lord is with you, you can fly.”
    Oct 26 2026
    In the beginning, a new business startup is, essentially, a survival game. Keep it alive, keep cash flowing, keep customers coming, see what happens. But after a while, the hope is that we move from crawling to walking, walking to running, and, hopefully, running to flying. But it doesn’t always go that way. And even when it does, sometimes that growth curve is wretchedly long; brutally flat, sometimes for years.If your friend started a business and, five years in, he still could not afford to pay his wife, would you call him a failure? Would you tell him to quit and get “real job”? Perhaps, if you’re kind, you’d at least chalk this up to a hobby — maybe a charity? 😂 — but not a job. Not a business.That’s where our story begins.And I’m already giving it away because, if it’s a story worth telling, then you’re now waiting with baited breath to hear the glory story.But pause with me for a second… because crawling for five years - 260 weeks - is a brutal, grueling, soul-crushing experience.This guy had borrowed $600 to start making miniature picture frames in his garage. His two young sons glued the frames together for seven cents apiece and his wife handled the shipping.She did so, quite dutifully, for five long years—without pay. That’s not something I’d typically recommend. And quite honestly, that’s part of why I’m telling the story.They were super tight on money, obviously, so every dollar they could spare went back into the business. Only many years later, did he describe those early days as crawling: “You crawl and crawl. Eventually you get on your feet. Then, if the Lord is with you, you can fly.”I gotta confess … the flying sounds great. Most of us like the flying part. We all wanna fly. And who can blame us? We live in a world with “success stories” like Anthropic starting literally 5 years ago (Jan 2021) and today, 5.75 years later it’s value is estimated not in the billions but in the trillions of dollars.The crawling is so much more common. It’s real. And it’s very hard to romanticize when you are the one on your hands and knees.But they crawled. And, notably, they kept crawling.The little frame business became a small store. The small store became several stores. Several stores became a national company worth — you guessed it — billions of dollars.At that point, the problem changed. Early on, the question was how to keep the business alive. Now the question was what to do with everything it had become.Smart people called “advisors” came in to help the founder protect the wealth and pass the company to his children, then to his grandchildren.That’s pretty sensible advice. Time-tested. Understandable. “That’s what everyone would suggest” kinda stuff.Yet it made him miserable.He actually wept under the weight of it. Something was wrong. He could not live with the idea that generations of his family would inherit wealth they had not earned, especially when that wealth might hurt their character more than help it.One day while enjoying a prayer walk through his back yard, God brought a question to him: “What would you do with the company if another family owned it?”It landed so squarely that he points to that mid-day walk as a pivotal moment in his life.The answers came very quickly. If another family owned the company, he would manage it faithfully. He would work hard. He would take care of the people in it. But he would not confuse the company’s money with his own.Bingo.The company did not, in fact, belong to his family. It belonged, as all things do, to God.Christians say “God owns it all” so often that the words can lose their power. They’re true. We acknowledge them. We nod our heads. Sometimes we write checks. But our core beliefs usually lie out of reach. Beliefs like,“it’s really all up to me.”“I’m the provider for my family.”“I know God led me to start this business so I’m sure it will succeed.”That last one can really sound like faith. But God leading me to start a business doesn’t mean He has promised it will thrive. When I confuse the two, every slow month becomes a test of His trustworthiness. Now I’m trying to keep the business alive and prove that I was right about God. The role of a steward answers both because, as a steward, I’m responsible for working faithfully and leaving the outcomes up to God.If another family owned your business, you would not casually use its money to build your personal kingdom. If another family owned your investment account, you would not treat every gain as permission to raise your lifestyle. If another family owned your house, your time, and your abilities, you would probably ask more often what the owners wanted done with them.Ownership says, “Because this is mine, what do I want to do with it?”Stewardship asks, “Since all I have is the Lord’s, what would the Owner do with it?”That is the dichotomy of ownership and stewardship.The ...
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    12 min
  • The Gift That Leads to Death

    The Gift That Leads to Death
    Oct 19 2026
    “The Gift That Leads to Death.” I know, such a cheery start to your day. Probably not the day-one giving campaign sermon title of choice, and that’s fine.I want to put two stories from Scripture next to each other, starting with the widow in Zarephath in 1 Kings 17. Elijah comes to her and asks for bread, and she tells him she has a handful of flour and a little oil left. She’s going to make something for herself and her son, and then they’re going to die.That’s how little she has. She’s already thinking in terms of their last meal.So when she makes something for Elijah, I wonder how much hopelessness was wrapped up in that moment. Humanly speaking, you could almost read it as, “Well, what does it matter? Fine, you can have it.” We aren’t told everything going through her mind, but Elijah has also brought her a promise from God: the flour and oil will last until He sends rain.And she acts on it. This woman, who isn’t even part of Israel, trusts the God of this prophet enough to give from the bottom of her barrel. Somehow the flour doesn’t run out, and neither does the oil. There is food for her household through the famine.Then we get to Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5.It’s the early church, and people are bringing gifts to the apostles to care for the other believers. Ananias and Sapphira sell a piece of property and bring part of the proceeds, but they present the gift as though they’re giving the whole amount.And Peter sees straight through it.By the way, they were allowed to keep some of the money. Peter specifically says the property belonged to them, and after they sold it, the money was theirs to do with as they wished. They could have brought a portion and been honest about it.Instead, they lied. They wanted people to think they had surrendered everything while they were secretly holding something back. They wanted to be seen as these wonderfully generous people giving their lives to the service of the church.And both of them died.That is a sobering story to read, especially next to the widow’s. Both gave, and yet apparently not every gift is generous.Where is the giving coming from?The widow is responding to God’s word with almost nothing left. Ananias and Sapphira have property to sell, and they’re trying to manage what people think of them. From the outside, you could look at either gift and see someone being generous. But what’s happening in their hearts is very different.And I think it’s pretty easy for us to put spiritual language around mixed motives.I can give because I want to be faithful, but I can also give because I want to be impressive. Money might be losing its grip on me while approval still has a pretty firm hold. The outward act could look almost identical, even to me if I’m not paying attention.So “Am I giving?” doesn’t get far enough. Where is that giving coming from, and what is it doing in my soul? Who am I becoming as I give?I’ve talked before about the gravitational pull of wealth. We have to respect its ability to draw our lives into orbit around it. Giving can help loosen that grip, but I can also give an amount I’m perfectly comfortable with, get the satisfaction of feeling generous, and never have to trust God with anything that feels costly.Or I can give a lot and become even more attached to being known as someone who gives a lot.That possibility ought to make us pause before assuming the gift tells us everything we need to know.I can hide behind a good strategyIn my line of work, I talk about generosity in terms of tools quite often. Donor-advised funds, appreciated securities, estate planning, deductions. All of that matters, and it can be really helpful.Take a donor-advised fund. You can contribute eligible appreciated assets to a charitable account, then recommend grants to ministries and other charities from that account. Depending on the asset and your circumstances, that can allow more to go toward giving than selling the asset yourself, paying capital gains tax, and giving what’s left.That’s a really cool tool. I love helping people think through things like that.But you could set up the fund, contribute loads of appreciated stock, and still have the same heart problem you had before you started. A clever strategy can’t settle the question of why you’re giving.And sometimes the planning itself gives us a way to delay obedience.I have five kids, and then I have a sixth kid called Charity in my estate plan. The ministries we care about, our church, people getting the gospel to unreached places, will receive an equal portion of our estate.I’m glad we have that in place. But I also have to ask whether knowing they’ll receive something someday could become an excuse to ignore God’s prompting to give now.Because when I say, “I’m going to give a lot to them someday,” I should probably be more precise. My executor will give it. I’ll be gone.Oh, dang.There’s a different kind of trust involved ...
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    14 min
  • Then what?

    Then what?
    Oct 5 2026
    It’s a Monday. I’m driving into my office and listening to a voice memo from my good buddy out in Colorado. We banter about faith & finance topics all the time — in fact a few of my newsletter ideas have come from chats with him. And this one’s no different.He proposed to me the question on the other side of most every financial goal. And let me pause there — financial goals like…Build a businessGet rid of the mortgagePay for your kids’ collegeSave $1 million in your retirement accountsGet the promotion to secure your income for the foreseeable future.So you get the point. But I wanna share this question with you. On the other side of those goals … now what?The economic warning light that used to flash in the corner of your life has finally turned off.So what’s next?It’s a fair question because more money really can make life better, especially when there isn’t enough of it. Money can put groceries in the refrigerator, fix the transmission, cover the electric bill, and give a family room to breathe. The longing to provide well isn’t greed. For many people, earning more would relieve real pressure.But my friend’s question assumed that pressure had already lifted. The income is there, the family is healthy, the house is comfortable and the boxes are checked.What do you pursue when you no longer need to pursue the things that got you here?The little Eden we buildI think many of us spend years trying to architect our own little Eden.We want a beautiful life with everything we need, arranged carefully enough that very little faith is required. We don’t mind God being present, of course. We would simply prefer that he not disrupt the plans.So we work, save, insure, diversify, and optimize until we’ve protected ourselves from every problem we can imagine. Then, once the structure is secure, we plan to give God the overflow.One problem here is that we never defined how much was enough, so the overflow never quite arrives.There is always another expense, another upgrade, another milestone, or another risk to guard against. The imaginary line moves every time we get close to it. We keep assuming that one day we will look around, discover we have far more than we need, and become radically generous without having practiced generosity along the way.Proverbs says, “The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it a wall too high to scale.”Read that last phrase again: “…they imagine…“Money can protect us from many things. It can absorb a bad month, replace a roof, and pay for excellent medical care. But the wall is never as high as we imagine it is. Eventually, life reminds us that we are finite.The finish line keeps movingEven if life goes wonderfully, there is no natural point at which desire declares itself satisfied.I once heard a kind Englishman named Richard share his life story. He described what happened when his career changed and his income took off. He began earning in a month what he once earned in a year. Then he earned it in a few weeks. His lifestyle rose just as quickly.Wool became cashmere. Nylon became leather. The house got larger, and the schools became more exclusive. None of the upgrades stood out as outrageous on their own, after all … he could afford it. Couldn’t he?Then he realized that his consumption had become insatiable.Around that time, his church began raising money for a new building. As he studied the plans, he started researching what the same money could accomplish through ministries serving people in much poorer parts of the world. He had spent years asking what more money could add to his life. He began asking what it could accomplish through his life.That question changed the way he gave.For years, he increased his generosity beyond what felt comfortable. Each time, he feared he had finally gone too far and would discover that God would not provide. Each year gave him another chance to learn that God’s provision was sturdier than his fear.Then he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.Near the end of his life, he said he was grateful God had gotten hold of his heart before the fear of death forced the issue. His generosity had been freely offered, not extracted by a diagnosis.I heard his story 2 years after he died, and shared it with my friend on an ordinary Monday morning voice memo.Richard had no way to know where his obedience would travel or whom it would reach.A larger storyThe question “then what?“ assumes there is a finish line where the important work is complete and the rest of life has to be filled.But you may already have much of what you once thought would make you feel secure. You may have savings, a home, healthy children, meaningful work, and enough margin to absorb a surprise. In a real sense, you may have already arrived at someone else’s dream.And yet the worries remain. The goals multiply. The finish line moves.Life may still feel quite hard.Money cannot give us the kind of security that lets us...
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    15 min
  • You Have Permission to Save for Retirement

    You Have Permission to Save for Retirement
    Sep 28 2026
    About a year ago, I needed someone to give me permission to save for retirement. I know that sounds really strange coming from a financial planner. I got into finance because compound interest absolutely bedazzled me. It felt like black magic. You look at a graph showing what happens when money compounds over 10, 20, 30, or 40 years, and it is hard to believe.Then I tried to reconcile the financial wizardry of modern investing with my Bible—especially Jesus’ teachings in Luke 12 and similar. I read about a Jesus, who had nowhere to lay his head and gave haunting warnings about wealth. Who called the rich foolish for building bigger barns and telling himself he could finally relax, eat, drink, and be merry.Suddenly, my excitement about investing and building wealth felt harder to reconcile with following Christ.Was saving for retirement wise stewardship? Or was I slowly buying into an affluent, self-indulgent, godless vision of the good life? Could it be both? I do not think I am the only Christian who has felt that tension.I talk with people who say, “I want to save, but I don’t ever plan to stop working.” That sounds bold & faithful when you are 35. Then you turn 50 and your knees hurt. Your back hurts. Your eyes are not what they used to be. Work takes more out of you than it did 20 years ago. Then grandchildren arrive. Your parents need help. You want more time to serve your church, care for your family, or do work that matters without worrying about what it pays. Eventually, the question changes. It is no longer, “Why would I ever stop working?” It becomes, “What might become possible if I no longer had to trade so much of my time for money?”I needed to know that it is okay to save for retirement.Saving does not mean you are abandoning God. It does not mean your faith is weak. It does not automatically mean you are storing up treasure on earth or pursuing a secular fantasy where enough money finally makes you safe. It may simply mean you are being a wise steward, carefully managing your household and preparing for responsibilities you can reasonably expect.Consider the antProverbs tells the sluggard to consider the ant. She prepares food in summer and gathers provision at harvest. She does not wait until winter and call that “trusting in God’s provision”. She recognizes that seasons change, and so she works while work can be done.Human life has seasons too.Most of us will not have the same strength, earning capacity, or opportunities at 75 that we had at 45. Preparing for that change is …wise. Pretending it will never happen is …foolish. And Scripture repeatedly commends wise provision.“Precious treasure and oil are in a wise man’s dwelling, but a foolish man devours it” (Proverbs 21:20)Wisdom does not consume everything today. It preserves some resources for tomorrow — that is what retirement savings can be. A careful, consistent setting aside of some of today’s income because you know tomorrow may require something different from you. You are preparing to care for your household. You are reducing the chance that your future needs will fall entirely on your children or community. You are creating room to respond generously when God places an opportunity in front of you.None of that guarantees security. Money cannot do that. It does not replace daily dependence on God.It is still wise to consider the ant.The problem with the bigger barnsBut what about the rich fool in Luke 12? His land produced abundantly. He tore down his barns and built larger ones so he could store the crop. Then he told his soul, “You have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” God called him a fool. YIKES. Take that in for a second. God doesn’t often call people fools. The warning needs to be heeded. Wealth can tempt us to treat God as unnecessary and comfort as our reward. A retirement plan can become an attempt to build a private utopia where no one needs anything from us and we need nothing from God.But notice where Jesus takes the parable. The man “lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” His abundance stopped. With him. In his hands. Or, more accurately, in his barns.Proverbs 11:26 says, “The people curse him who holds back grain, but a blessing is on the head of him who sells it.” It’s never occurred to me that the rich fool could have sold grain. He could have paid workers, met needs, given generously, strengthened his community, and turned abundance into blessing.Instead, he hoarded everything for himself …and called it the good life. That is the spiritual danger. The size of the barn matters less than what the barn is for and whose kingdom it serves. We have no clue how large his barns were before. That’s really not the point. The mindset and heart-posture around money and it’s perilous implications for our souls is the point here.Financial freedom for faithful workThe usual retirement story says you work for ...
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    14 min
  • I need a better scorecard

    I need a better scorecard
    Sep 21 2026

    A few weeks back, we talked about the fear of doing the wrong thing leading us to inaction—where this shows up in life, career, and money. We often feel embarrassed for not knowing things we feel we should’ve figured out by now and that embarrassment leads us to hide instead of “asking the dumb question” that might lead to the change we’re longing for. I ended our time around Jesus’ parable of the talents, pointing out that both the 2- and 5-talent servants received identical praise. Jesus did not discriminate based on quantity.

    But you might’ve noticed I didn’t address the 600lb gorilla in the parable—the guy who did nothing. He’s, arguably, the more poignant member of the illustration, given my context.

    what fear really costs me

    That guy. The servant who, filled with fear, did nothing with his money sobers us because he demonstrates what fear—what embarrassment—can actually do. It doesn’t just make me put on my helmet, oftentimes it keeps me off the bike altogether. And staying off the bike keeps me from exploring the mountain trails, seeing the owls and deer, and sitting by the quiet of the lake at sunset (ask me how I know!). In short, fear makes me bury, freeze, and hide. Because as painful as it may be to sit by and do nothing, it’s better than doing the wrong thing and losing it all, right?

    what our scorecard isn’t telling us

    So I bury my treasure — hiding my gifts, shying away from my callings, backing down from iron-sharpening-iron style conflict. For some reason I’m often afraid to be the pioneer who does the thing first. I’d rather sit back and watch to see how it goes for the other guy. But what would be true about me if I was the first to do with my gifting what God intended for me to do with it?

    I freeze because analysis is the endless cycle of doing tomorrow what I should have done yesterday. It’s the death by committee — and the committee is all in my own head. It’s easier to wait it out, see what happens, do some more research, have another conversation, and then I’ll act, right? Except by that point the sands have shifted and the new evidence demands I return to square one, endlessly prolonging action through the veil of planning.

    But eventually the rubber meets the road. The master returns home. The financial day of reckoning has come. The credit card bill arrived. Or the retirement party has been scheduled. The reality we’ve been running away from with eyes turned behind us has become the brick wall we didn’t see coming — and just ran into. And we weren’t ready for it.

    How then shall we live?

    I want to revisit my post from July 27 — *the prize we’re all longing for.* The dream of every faithful Christian is to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

    Not, “Well done, impressive investor.”Not, “Well done, successful entrepreneur.”Not even, “Well done, because you produced more than everyone else.”

    The servants who received two talents and five talents heard the same praise. Different starting points. Different outcomes. Same scorecard: faithfulness with what they had.

    That is the scorecard we need. One that measures whether I faithfully used what God entrusted to me, not whether my results looked impressive next to yours.

    So perhaps the better question is: What does faithfulness require of me today? and what faithfulness to Christ free me from today?

    Cheering you on.



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit faithandfinance.substack.com
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    8 min
  • the purpose of financial peace

    the purpose of financial peace
    Aug 17 2026
    If Dave Ramsey helped you get out of debt, start investing, or simply think differently about money, there may come a point where you ask a different question: “Okay, now what?”The debt is gone, or at least moving in the right direction. You have margin again. You are investing. Retirement is getting closer. The 401(k) feels more complicated than it used to. The business is doing well. The kids are getting older. The decisions feel bigger. At some point, a lot of people move from “How do I stop the bleeding?” to “How do I steward this well?”SmartVestorThat is the idea behind Ramsey’s SmartVestor program. Ramsey has spent decades helping people take control of their money through budgeting, debt payoff, emergency funds, investing, generosity, and common sense repeated until it finally starts to get into your bones. When someone reaches the point where they need professional investing help, SmartVestor connects them with financial professionals who share that same commitment to teaching and serving.I’m grateful to share that Openhanded Wealth has officially been accepted as a Ramsey SmartVestor Pro here in North Georgia. That means a lot to me. One reason is Ramsey’s emphasis on finding advisors with the “heart of a teacher.” I have never wanted financial planning to feel mysterious enough that people need me forever. I want people to understand what they own, why they own it, what decisions are in front of them, and how those decisions fit into the life they are actually trying to build.early rootsThe other reason is more personal. I started listening to Dave Ramsey on AM radio while lying on my bedroom floor when I was about eight years old. His show was one of the first things that made me interested in personal finance.Almost 25 years later, someone can now go to Ramsey looking for financial help, raise their hand and say, “I’d like to talk to somebody,” and I may get to be the person on the other end of that phone call. That is really cool.The goal is not just more money. The goal is to use money more faithfully.But the longer I do this work, the more convinced I become that the goal is not merely to help people accumulate more money. The goal is to help people use money more faithfully.margin funds ministryIn one of the SmartVestor trainings, Dave shared a story from Financial Peace University. A woman who had been an atheist her whole life was invited by a neighbor to a Ramsey event at a church. The neighbor did not want to go alone, so she went with her. They heard about Financial Peace University that weekend and decided to sign up.During one of the group discussions, people began sharing areas where they were struggling financially. This woman eventually shared that she was a single mom with two kids and had taken a part-time job at night just to make her car payment and insurance. The payment was not just an inconvenience. It was eating her life. After she shared, a man at the table reached into his pocket, took a key off his key ring, and threw it to her. He told her to sell her car, get rid of the payment, and he would bring her the title to his 2013 Nissan Altima the next week.finding different adviceThat is a very different kind of financial advice. No spreadsheet. No Monte Carlo simulation. No lecture on debt ratios. Just a man with enough margin to see a need and meet it.Dave ended the story by saying that the woman was baptized into Christ that weekend. I do not want to overstate the story or turn generosity into a formula. God saves. God draws people to Himself. God uses means we cannot control and usually do not see coming. But that act of generosity was part of the story, and I think that is worth paying attention to.planning makes it possibleThis is one of the reasons I care so much about financial planning. Yes, the Baby Steps matter. Getting out of debt matters. Building an emergency fund matters. Investing for the future matters. Paying attention to taxes, insurance, estate planning, and business structure matters. But none of those things are the finish line.They are tools that create margin. And margin gives you the ability to say yes when God puts something in front of you. Sometimes that yes looks like giving more consistently to your church. Sometimes it looks like helping your adult child without enabling foolishness. Sometimes it looks like taking less income from the business so you can hire help. Sometimes it looks like giving away a car because a single mom at your FPU table is drowning under a payment.open handsMoney is not the point. But money is one of the tools God often uses to reveal what we love, what we fear, and what we are willing to hold with an open hand.That is the kind of work I want to do with families and business owners. Not just helping people answer, “Can I retire?” Helping them ask better questions.asking better questionsWhat has God entrusted to me? What needs to be simplified? Where am I carrying risk I have not ...
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    10 min
  • the first things in a world of tradeoffs

    the first things in a world of tradeoffs
    Aug 10 2026

    I’ve been reading A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken, and I have been completely swept up in it.

    A friend recommended it, and I can see why. Vanauken is a beautiful writer. The kind of writer who makes you lose track of time.

    More than once, I’ve looked up from my morning reading and realized I was suddenly twenty minutes behind schedule. The coffee appointment was coming fast. The day had already started. But I had been pulled into a story that felt larger than my own.

    To me, that’s part of what makes a story worthwhile.

    For a little while, it lifts you into something grand and beautiful. It gives you language for things you already knew, but had not yet been able to say.

    A Severe Mercy tells the story of Sheldon and his wife, Davy, and their journey toward Christianity. Early in the book, they are at Oxford, reading C. S. Lewis, Augustine, Chesterton, and others. They are not yet Christians, but they are beginning to realize that Christianity is not a small thing to be lightly accepted or rejected.

    It is not a nice addition to an otherwise respectable life.

    It is either true, and therefore the most important truth in the world, or it is false.

    He writes:

    “It is not possible to be incidentally a Christian. The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing. This suggests a reason for the dislike of Christians by nominal or non-Christians: their lives contain no overwhelming firsts but many balances.”

    …“No overwhelming firsts but many balances.”

    That is a piercing description of modern life.

    And if we’re honest, it may describe the way many a lot of us handle our finances.

    We believe in Jesus. We love the Lord. We want to be faithful. We want our lives to reflect the truth we confess.

    But then we look at our financial lives and find a long list of balances.

    * A balance between generosity and comfort.

    * A balance between stewardship and convenience.

    * A balance between conviction and performance.

    * A balance between wanting to honor God and not wanting to ask too many questions about what we own.

    * A balance between “all that I have belongs to the Lord” and “I hope my portfolio does well.”

    And I say all this as a fellow traveler. I feel the weight of it too.

    Most of us aren’t trying to be careless with money. We’re not trying to ignore the Lord. We’re certainly not trying to fund things that work against our convictions.

    But are good intentions really enough?

    At some point, love compels us to look.

    Love for the Lord.

    Love for our neighbor.

    Love for the people affected by the companies we own, the products we support, the systems we fund, and the businesses we profit from.

    If Christianity is overwhelmingly first, then it cannot remain sealed off from our investment accounts, our giving, our spending, our estate plans, our insurance decisions, or our cash flow.

    That does not mean every decision becomes more complicated.

    In fact, it may mean the opposite.

    Your next step may be very simple.

    Look.

    Look at what you own.

    Look at what your investments are funding.

    Look at whether your financial life is shaped more by habit, fear, convenience, or faith.

    You do not have to figure everything out this week. But you can take one honest step.

    Go to The Good Investor and use the portfolio screening tool. Or visit Inspire Insight and type in one ticker from your portfolio.

    Just look.

    Because once you see, you cannot unsee.

    And that is not a bad thing.

    It may be mercy.

    It may be the beginning of a more integrated life, where faith is not one category among many, but the first thing that rightly orders the rest.

    Personally, I think ol’ Sheldon was right.

    It is not possible to be incidentally a Christian.

    The question is whether we are willing to let that truth reach all the way down into our money.



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit faithandfinance.substack.com
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    5 min
  • What the world hasn’t given, it can’t take away.

    What the world hasn’t given, it can’t take away.
    Aug 3 2026

    I recently found a new favorite artist. He’s the bombastic, passionate, young, and fiery singer-songwriter who rocketed into spotify charts with his song Dusty Bibles. The song is a modern prophesy:

    We got dust on our Bibles, brand-new iPhones… No wonder why we feel this way.

    Good, right?

    Josiah Queen is his name. And he’s written a small collection of other songs too. Another favorite line came to my ears this week:

    What the world hasn’t given, it can’t take away.

    The song is about the treasure God alone can give and nothing and no one can take away: joy.

    But I’d like to pause and turn the crystal the other way and look at it from the reverse:

    “What the world has given, it can take away.”

    Naturally, I’m going to apply this to money. Because so much of our lives orbit around money. It can shape:

    * the education we pursue

    * the work we choose

    * the place we live

    * the people we know

    * the possessions we acquire

    * the lifestyle we maintain

    * the legacy we leave behind

    Money is very powerful. And, as such, it’s a terrible place to put our security — so why do we so often do exactly that?

    I have to confess that my buddy Josiah (I’m sure we could be good buddies) hits the nail on the head - yes and amen - but those words were much easier to sing with passion at 23 than 33.

    Even though I know full well wealth is unstable. Markets fluctuate. Businesses rise and fall. Careers end. Health changes. Possessions deteriorate. Moth, rust, the whole nine. Even the wealth we carefully preserve will eventually pass into someone else’s hands. And we all must reckon with the fact that everything money buys us is temporary.

    All the trappings that the world offers to us, it can also take from us.

    And yet…

    What the world hasn’t given, it can’t take away.

    Christ, our treasure that does not fade, our pearl of great price, has given us in Luke 16:9 a rather staggering picture of the lasting treasure we can, in fact, acquire with worldly wealth.

    And I tell you [learn from this], make friends for yourselves [for eternity] by means of the wealth of unrighteousness [that is, use material resources as a way to further the work of God], so that when it runs out, they will welcome you into the eternal dwellings. Luke 16:9 (AMP)

    Let’s unpack this briefly:

    “…Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth…”

    what a brilliant opener. Be friendly. Use money to make friends. It’s very easy to do. Prov. 19:6 reminds us of this: “everyone is a friend to a man who gives gifts”. Do you want lots of friends? Give gifts. Lots of them. Great use of wealth, right there.

    “…so that when it [fails/runs out/is all gone]…”

    the failure is inevitable here — it’s a given. The wealth will fail. In fact, many translations say “when you fail”. It’s almost implied that, at some point, your wealth-accumulating abilities will dry up and evaporate. Certainly few aged men and women find themselves in their peak earning years.

    “…they will welcome you into eternal dwellings…”

    The implication here is that these friends were not heading for heaven prior to encountering you and your clever (shrewd) use of worldly wealth. You leveraged your money to build Gospel-seasoned friendships thereby leading to the salvation of your friends.

    Someday when you and your wealth fail, and you finally lay down to your final rest, your eyes will open in the age to come and you’ll be met face-to-face, eye-to-eye, and embraced by your friends - for all eternity - who will join you in the fully-restored, fully-redeemed work of the kingdom. All because you dared to trust, not in riches, but in God. And you leveraged these failing riches to “win friends and influence people” unto glory.

    Wealth is not our refuge. It is a temporary tool entrusted to us for providing our needs, loving our families, serving our neighbors, and building relationships that will long-outlast the wealth itself. That’s kingdom work. And it’s yours for the taking.



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