11/17/2011

Contents

1. Money Is Good!

Money and Culture

Money Really Is Good!

The Battle for Your Wallet is in your Mind

2. Planning and Preparing for Our Financial Futures

Missionary to the Nation of Debt

What Is Your Current Financial Address?

Survival:   Law of Perseverance

Stagnation:   Law of Responsibility

Significant:   Law of Greatness

Setting Goals: GPS (Goal-Powered Spending)   Law of Fidelity

Compound Interest:    Law of Use

So, You Want to Buy a Home?   Final Law Exam!

3. Debt Valley Days

Looming Shadows of Debt

So, Is Debt Ethically Wrong?

What Is Scripturally Wrong with Debt?

Four Things Debt Causes:

Seven Debtly Snares

Symptoms of Debt:

Expense of Debt

Seven Debtly Stages

4. Exodus from Debt Valley

Step 1. Earn all you can:

Take a Talent Inventory

Career Talent Identification

Step 2. Spend Less Than You Earn:

Seek Godly Wisdom in Financial Areas.

Step 3. Use the Excess to Eliminate Debt:

Reset Your Affections

Who Do I Pay Off First?!

Debt Elimination Strategy

But What If I Can’t Pay All My Bills?

Alternatives When You Can’t Make Your Payments

Get Pre-Bankruptcy Counseling

5. Stewardship

Work to Be a Blessing

The Three Mentalities of Giving: Poverty, Prosperity, and Stewardship

New Covenant Law Is Love

Check Your Heart!

Seed for the Harvest!

Here’s the Deal:

Introduction

There would be no possible way to give credit to all who have contributed, both positively and negatively, to the basic biblical principles we have learned and experienced in this book. We would have to start with both of us being born into faith-filled families, having parents with excellent work ethics, and having basically good American school systems with passionate teachers. Then, early childhood negatives: by six years old, Ray had lost his dad to leukemia, and had a widowed mother raising two sons alone; Shirley’s family had career changes, moving many times in and out of impoverished neighborhoods and school systems. There were threats of sibling leukemia and cancelled hospital insurance. Each of us somehow thrived in homes plagued by psychological, financial, and emotional upheaval. Our teen years were full of educational promise, but had no financial promise. Without an entitlement expectation we both aspired to obtain futures far beyond our peers in a desperate goal to "never be broke another day in our life," to quote Dr. Leroy Thompson, of Word of Life Christian Center, Darrow, Louisiana.

Many years passed for both of us as we grew up. The common thread was a strong sense of living within our means, saving to get things, and working hard. These were the ethics and values that we inherited from our parents and grandparents. All things considered, the major success contributor to acknowledge has to be the Lord, for the vast wisdom, discipline, and faith to move beyond what life dealt us as young adults. However, at that phase of our lives, we did not have a level of spiritual maturity to really understand all this.

We had the peace over the mass confusion of the conforming society of the sixties and seventies to look beyond the expensive homes, yachts, and sport cars our friends were selling their futures to have. We would seek the uncluttered presence of the Lord each morning in a simpler lifestyle. At the price of great ridicule and discrimination, we purchased the privilege of laying our heads on our pillow at night, knowing we owed no one anything but the love God had freely given us.

Foreword

On July 10, 1994, we joined forces at the altar as spiritually mature Christians starting out in the power of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and ready to do great things. One of our greatest presents to each other was combining our households with very little debt. The first ten years were marked by great blessings and great challenges. The steadfast support of our pastors, the strong teaching of the ministries outlined below, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit brought us through challenges, including job loss within first year, a resulting legal battle related to child custody and financial support, one daughter starting college with little financial aid, an attack of bladder cancer, abandonment at various times by various family members, business challenges, and more. During all these times, we found that hiding place from the pressures trying to compromise our position and relationship with the One who knew our end from our beginning. (Psalm 91)

Our only credit goes to being diligent and obedient to the Lord and what these great teachers have taught us. Regardless of the challenges, the blessing continued to pursue and overtake us. We totally got out of debt, even paying off our car and home mortgage. We founded a credit counseling agency based on Isaiah 58:6. We moved to a penthouse condo on the water and paid it off in less than five years. We successfully put two daughters through college with no debt and paid for their weddings with no debt. We purchased a family thirty-four-foot cruising boat, and an office building. Our only debt is related to the office building, paid by the tenants each month.

Though contributing ministries are listed with contact information at the back of this book, special mention needs to be made of the ones whose materials are included throughout our book. Dr. M.G. Pat Robertson, who was very instrumental in Shirley’s return to a life of faith, wrote and recently revised into DVD format Secret Kingdom, from which we note the spiritual laws that govern release or restraint of kingdom blessings in our lives. Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, of The Believers Voice of Victory, were faithful teachers for us daily for over thirty years on seed faith and harvest for financial prosperity and health. Dr. LeRoy Thompson’s powerful revelation books and interviews on the three lands of existence: land of not enough, land of just enough, and land of more than enough.

All biblical references, unless specifically noted, are taken from The Holy Bible, Finis Jennings Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, Twentieth Printing, October 1989.

Finally, we are very indebted to our clients from Harbour Credit Counseling, DebtFreeAmerica.com, American Payment Technologies, and Approved Bankruptcy Certification Services, who have fueled our passion for getting people out of debt and teaching them to thrive regardless of their circumstances or the national economy. They are an ever-present reminder that the Lord does have plans to give us hope and a future.

Assisting thousands of people in achieving and maintaining a debt-free lifestyle is why we continually seek new ways to take these powerful biblical principles to every possible media.

Our Objective

Get the Most People out of Debt the Fastest!

Isaiah 58:6–8

New International Version

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free

and break every yoke?

7

Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe them,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

8

Then your light will break forth like the dawn,

and your healing will quickly appear;

then your righteousness[a] will go before you,

and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard."

Money Is Good!

Chapter 1

Money and Culture

Money is a terrible master, but an excellent servant.— P.T. Barnum

Law of Unity: Matthew 18:19–20

Again I say unto you, that If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them by My Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there AM I in the midst of them.

First, let’s expose the