TO WHOM ARE YOU INDEBTED?

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.

Proverbs 22:7            

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

I am a deployment specialist by trade, training Sailors and their families on how to deal with the challenges that deployment separation brings. A component of that training involves going overseas, boarding a ship, and riding it back to the United States, conducting training to help Sailors have a successful homecoming along the way.

This year, I have been on four of these Return and Reunion trips (affectionately referred to as R and R’s) and have really enjoyed the experience. I spent many years in the Navy onboard ships during my time of service but it isn’t so much the opportunity to sleep in a rack (Navy speak for bed) or eat chow on the Mess Decks. No, the reason I like the trips is that I get to deliver training that I wouldn’t typically get to do when I am home and working out of our Norfolk center.

Of the six main briefs I teach, two are financial briefs which are typically taught by Personal Financial Management educators at the Norfolk center but delivered by Return and Reunion personnel during the overseas trips. The two briefs are Car Buying and Money Management, the latter focusing on Sailors and their families properly handling their finances with part of the focus on avoiding indebtedness, a major issue not just in the military but in society as a whole. The statistics show this as truth.

Data as of December 2013 shows that the average US household owes $7,128 on their credit cards alone. Of course, this is only one aspect of indebtedness although it is the third largest source of debt in a household. The first two are (1) mortgage debt with the average U.S. family owing $149,456 and (2) student loan debt with the average being $32,140 (based on Federal Reserve statistics). The end translation across all this is that we are a nation of borrowers and this is bad news for us as the people of God. I say this because of our proverb for today from Proverbs, Chapter 22:

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender. Proverbs 22:7

When you are underwater in debt, in other words, you owe more than you have, then you are slaved to the entities you have borrowed from, you are indebted to them and as a result obligated to them. They have a sense of control over you because you owe them.

So who are you indebted to? To whom do you have to repay?

It’s a question we had better seriously consider.

You see, we take a very cavalier attitude toward indebtedness for the most part. Instead of avoiding it, we seem to embrace it, seeing it as just a part of life. Maybe in some instances, it is such as when you have a car or a home to pay for as we need transportation and shelter to meet our needs. But in other instances, we accumulate debt because we aren’t disciplined enough to control our spending. We lose discernment of the difference between a need and a want to the point where everything becomes a want. And before we know it, our debt starts to insidiously control our lives. We are truly, as Solomon states, enslaved to the people we owe money to.

Friends, this is not what God’s will is for our lives. For when we allow ourselves to be indebted to others, enslaved by the money we owe, we are not yoked and enslaved to Christ Jesus, the One we should be connected to, the One who is the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6), the One we should ever feel indebted to for the great personal sacrifice He made to save us. We can never fully repay Jesus for all the suffering and pain He endured in our place but that doesn’t mean we need to be as committed to serving Him and others as He was to serving us.

As we approach a new year, will you make a commitment to reduce your material indebtedness so that you can be more fully slaved to Jesus than to the world?

I can’t think of too many better resolutions we could make for 2014.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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