Page 70 - Managing Your Resources - Student Syllabus - short combined

James 4:13–14 Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year
there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will
happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while
and then vanishes”

3. A third problem with debt is that the borrower almost always charges INTEREST
to obtain a return on his investment. In the process of borrowing and repaying,
you are not only repaying the amount of your debt, but also paying the interest
required. Let’s say you want to purchase a television for your home. You go down
to the store and they willingly give you the TV by setting up a payment schedule over five years at 10%
interest. The large screen TV costs around $800.

Over the five years or 60 payments, you will be paying $17 per month.
However, by the time you pay off the loan, you will have paid $1020, $800 for
the TV and $220 for interest. By borrowing the money for the TV, you actually
paid 27% MORE for the TV than if you purchased it using CASH. You pay more
for an item if you borrow the money to pay for it. In some cases, you may end
up paying almost double the cost!

Proverbs 14:29 He who is impulsive exalts folly

Romans 13:8 Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who
loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.

Nehemiah 5: 3-5 Others were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get
grain during the famine.” 4Still others were saying, “We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax
on our fields and vineyards. 5Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our fellow Jews and though
our children are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our
daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards
belong to others.”

4. A fourth problem with debt involves relationships. Should you not be able to repay
your debt, you will fracture your relationship with your lender. People borrow from
another, then do not repay the debt. The lender is forced to sue in court to obtain
repayment; confiscate personal items that belong to the borrower and sell them to
repay the debt; or forgive the debt. Most of the time these actions result in hard
feelings and a splintering of the relationship between the two parties. Is what you
borrowed worth destroying a relationship? The fractured relationships could result in
eternal consequences!

5. Debt can deny God the opportunity to WORK IN OUR LIVES AND TEACH US valuable lessons. God
may wish to show us his love by providing us with something we desire but for which we have no
resources. If we go into debt to get it anyway, we deny Him that opportunity (see Luke 12:22–32). In the
same way that parents refrain from giving a child everything the child wants because parents know it
isn’t in the child’s best interest, incurring debt can rob God of the opportunity to teach us through
denial.

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