And I've taken for granted a certain future that may not be there. And so we should be coming with humble hearts to the Lord and saying, Lord, are you redirecting me? Are you redirecting my thoughts and the resources you've blessed me with? Kurt Sauder: So really, being prayerful and saying, coming with open hands, and saying "Lord, you've given this money to me.
Now what do you want me to do with it. It goes back to the stewardship piece of, you know, we don't own any of it. He owns everything and we're just a steward. We're just partnering with God and we need to be available. Matt, I shot you an email, and we were just having a little dialogue about retirement and specifically, you know, the Bible doesn't really talk about retirement.
So, talk for a few minutes about retirement from a biblical perspective. And what does that mean? What does that look like? Just your thoughts. So the Bible actually does mention retirement one time in the book of numbers, as it pertains to Levitical priests.
I mean, for most of us it doesn't speak to retirement. You don't see examples of Paul stopping and ministry at a certain point and relaxing the rest of his life. But here's the thing. In a really practical way, the trends in the culture are that more and more people are saying, I'm going to retire later. I'm going to maybe not retire. Either I need the money or I just like my work and I'm going to stay useful. And that sort of thing.
And yet the reality is the vast majority of people today still do retire around age And the hard reality for many people is that they end up retiring earlier than they planned because of difficult circumstances, health reasons — their own health fails or the health of a loved one, where they need to spend time caring for a loved one. And so I think as stewards of God's resources, where I've landed on the retirement issue is that the ideal would be to prepare spiritually, vocationally, emotionally, to continue working as long as we possibly can, as long as God is directing us to that work that we're doing.
And yet prepare financially to retire earlier than we think we're going to. Because again, as good stewards, we can look at the realities of life and say, hey, I need to provide for my family. Not just right now, when I have an income, but also down the road when I might not.
Kurt Sauder: So yeah, the Bible would speak to that in saying be like the ant. Store up, be prepared for the rainy day, be prepared for the stormy day, be prepared for, you know, in our world now the pandemic, right. Be wise that it's not, you might not always have this solid income coming in. Matt Bell: If you think about the current environment from an investing standpoint, it's been scary for a lot of people because from mid February to mid-March the market entered a bear market so quickly.
It took 16 trading days. And then it's rocketed back up again. I like to think the acid test is, can you tell a year-old, can you explain it to them? What are we investing in? And why are we investing in this particular thing? We happen to have a year-old under roof, so I can test that out. But if you don't have one, you can borrow one and see how well you understand your investments. I think that falls within the mix of things we were talking about to evaluate right now.
Did the market scare me this year? Did that cause me to go to cash earlier this year? And so that would be another piece to evaluate right now. Kurt Sauder: Talk to us real quickly about, you know, when we get a stimulus check do we tithe on that? What if we don't have, you know, much income? What if we have half income? Do we give when we're struggling to pay our bills?
Matt Bell: Just all these easy topics, right? I would say a couple of things. I would point to certain principles. Proverbs three nine teaches us to give from the first fruits of our increase.
And so I look at that word increase and I say any resources coming into our life, that's where the first fruits are to be given to God's work. And so whether that's inheritance, whether that's stimulus check, whether that's, you know, income, commissions, whatever that is, my understanding and my conviction in this area is that we give off the increase.
When people are struggling, I mean, God knows our needs. He doesn't want us to, you know, if it comes down to a choice between providing for our family and giving some, of course I think in God's heart is to say, hey, take care of your family. But I do think again, back to a principle, I think when people are struggling, but they do have income.
I go back to the story of Cain and Abel, that one of their gifts was acceptable to the Lord and the other one was not. And the one that was acceptable was a choice gift. I think there's the principle, the choice gift.
And so you may give a very small, actual amount of money, but to whatever degree is possible, I would encourage, I would lean towards saying give something. So that would be my heart and conviction on that. Kurt Sauder: Yeah. I guess what you're saying, Paul writes in second Corinthians nine about this whole thing of living with generosity, right? Matt Bell: Yeah, absolutely. And one of my favorite stories, there's a couple I know back in Chicago that when they got married, she brought grand of non-mortgage debt into the marriage.
He called it a reverse dowry. He had a good attitude about the whole thing, but it took them years to get out of debt. And two things about it. It's our debt. When we got married, it became our debt.
I love that. And the second thing is that all the time they were in debt, where they couldn't buy a house, they couldn't afford to buy a house because of the debt payments, they gave. And they gave generously. They tithed. And then they switched it to the gross.
After they got out of debt, they looked back and realize, if we had used the money, if we had not given, we had bought the house we wanted to buy, looking back, it was perfectly time to be the height of the housing bubble.
And so they would have bought at the absolute high in the housing market. But by the time they were ready to actually purchase, because they gave and that delayed the process, they were able to buy at a much lower price than they would have otherwise. So all that to say, I think God's heart, God's design for us, is to live generously. And I think the instruction, the disposition is to be, as you said, to live generously.
Kurt Sauder: And there's something powerful that when we give something that's near and dear to our heart, and if you have some, for most people, money is near and dear to our heart. I mean, for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, you know? And so we, so one of the ways that we counter that is by giving. And again, the principle of the increase, if there is no increase, if you're out of work, that's a season for you to be receiving.
Matt Bell: But if there is an increase, you know, even if, like I said, even if it's a very small actual amount, I don't think you want to miss the opportunity to worship in that way.
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