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Being in Debt
by Jerry Ousley It hasn't been that many years ago that we were in debt up to our eyeballs. With Americans it seems to be a way of life. How can you have anything without being in debt? At least that's the way I reasoned it out. We had car payments, credit card payments, and a house payment besides all the utility bills, insurances, doctor bills, and on and on. If you are like we were, payday was a welcomed event but only on that day because the day after, it was all gone and it was back to being broke. Through a chain of events Deb and I were able to re-evaluate our financial situation and we were able to pay off all those credit cards, pay off our automobiles and we also had to do some belt-tightening on other things in order to get control of the situation. I praise the Lord because for the first time in our lives we use a debit card first and the credit card only if we have too. Even then we make it a point not to put more on that card than what we can pay off at the end of the month. Sacrifices had to be made. We got rid of cable TV. We decided that for $40.00 per month we could rent movies cheaper. So now we've got a set of rabbit ears sitting on top of the TV set. You know what we discovered? All we watched during the week was the evening news. On the weekends we'd spend about thirty-minutes going through the channels trying to find something we were interested in or hadn't seen before only to finally give up and run down to the video store. At first we'd buy movies but then we discovered that you could rent a movie two or three times for what you paid for it and the ones we bought are still sitting on the shelf gathering dust. So we cancelled cable, got the rabbit ears and joined a mail video club. Now we watch what we want when we want for half the cost. Anyway, other than the house, that's how we got out of debt and stay out of debt. By the way, we are also making sure that we pay extra on the house payment every month until we get rid of that one too. I'm not going to preach a sermon today about the evils of debt. I believe each of us needs to figure out where the line is as individual families. It's also much harder to get out of debt when the kids are still home. That's not the point of our topic today. The Bible tells us in Romans 13:8, "Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law." While this verse is addressing debt (just read the few verses above this one) the greater emphasis is on a debt that we do owe: To love each other. This is an obligation as a believer in Jesus Christ that we cannot escape. It is how we are marked as Christians. This is our greatest witness. When we owe a debt of love to each other it becomes one we can pay with joy instead of drudgery. Why are we obligated to a debt of love? It is because we really are obligated to Christ. In fact the Bible tells us in Romans 8:12 that we are debtors. Jesus paid the ultimate price for our sin on the cross. When we deserved death He died for us and His own sinless death paid for our sin. Doesn't it stand to reason then that it isn't a big favor we're doing for God when we love each other but only making good on an obligation we really owe? Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge. Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |